• Features
• Minimum Requirements
• Integrating PHPCSUtils in your external PHPCS standard
  • Composer-based
  • Non-Composer based integration
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Potential Support Questions from your End-Users
• Contributing
• License

PHPCSUtils is a set of utilities to aid developers of sniffs for PHP_CodeSniffer (or "PHPCS" for short).

This package offers the following features:

• PHP 5.4 or higher.
• PHP_CodeSniffer 3.9.0+.
• Recommended PHP extensions for optimal functionality:
  • PCRE with Unicode support (normally enabled by default)

If your external PHP_CodeSniffer standard only supports Composer-based installs, integrating PHPCSUtils is pretty straight forward.

Run the following from the root of your external PHPCS standard's project:

composer config allow-plugins.dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer true
composer require phpcsstandards/phpcsutils:"^1.0"

No further action needed. You can start using all the utility functions, abstract sniff classes and other features of PHPCSUtils straight away.

ℹ️ The PHPCSUtils package includes the Composer PHPCS plugin.

This plugin will automatically register PHPCSUtils (and your own external standard) with PHP_CodeSniffer, so you and your users don't have to worry about this anymore.

⚠️ Note: if your end-user installation instructions include instructions on adding a Composer PHPCS plugin or on manually registering your standard with PHPCS using the --config-set installed_paths command, you can remove those instructions as they are no longer needed.

ℹ️ As of Composer 2.2, Composer will ask for permission to allow the Composer PHPCS plugin to execute code. For the plugin to be functional, permission needs to be granted. This can be done ahead of time by instructing your users to run the following command before installing your standard:

composer config allow-plugins.dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer true

If your unit tests use the PHP_CodeSniffer native unit test suite, all is good.

If you have your own unit test suite to test your sniffs, make sure to load the Composer vendor/autoload.php file in your PHPUnit bootstrap file or as the PHPUnit bootstrap file.

If you intend to use the test utilities provided in the PHPCSUtils/TestUtils directory, make sure you also load the vendor/phpcsstandards/phpcsutils/phpcsutils-autoload.php file in your PHPUnit bootstrap file.

In this case, more than anything, you will need to update the non-Composer installation instructions for your end-users.

To use a non-Composer based installation for your sniff development environment, the same instructions would apply.

Your installation instructions for a non-Composer based installation will probably look similar to this:

• Install PHP_CodeSniffer via your preferred method.

• Register the path to PHPCS in your system $PATH environment variable to make the phpcs command available from anywhere in your file system.

• Download the [latest YourStandardName release] and unzip/untar it into an arbitrary directory. You can also choose to clone the repository using git.

• Add the path to the directory in which you placed your copy of the YourStandardName repo to the PHP_CodeSniffer configuration using the below command:

  phpcs --config-set installed_paths /path/to/YourStandardName

  Warning: ⚠️ The installed_paths command overwrites any previously set installed_paths. If you have previously set installed_paths for other external standards, run phpcs --config-show first and then run the installed_paths command with all the paths you need separated by comma's, i.e.:

  phpcs --config-set installed_paths /path/1,/path/2,/path/3

For things to continue working when you add PHPCSUtils to your standard, you need to replace the last bullet with this:

• Next, download the latest PHPCSUtils release and unzip/untar it into an arbitrary directory. You can also choose to clone the repository using git.

• Add the path to the directories in which you placed your copy of the YourStandardName repo and the PHPCSUtils repo to the PHP_CodeSniffer configuration using the below command:

  phpcs --config-set installed_paths /path/to/YourStandardName,/path/to/PHPCSUtils

  Warning: ⚠️ The installed_paths command overwrites any previously set installed_paths. If you have previously set installed_paths for other external standards, run phpcs --config-show first and then run the installed_paths command with all the paths you need separated by comma's, i.e.:

  phpcs --config-set installed_paths /path/1,/path/2,/path/3

To support non-Composer based installs for running your sniff unit tests, you will need to adjust the PHPUnit bootstrap.php file to allow for passing an environment variable pointing to your PHPCSUtils installation.

// Get the PHPCS dir from an environment variable.
$phpcsUtilDir = getenv('PHPCSUtils_DIR');

// This may be a Composer install.
if ($phpcsUtilDir === false && file_exists(__DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php')) {
    $vendorDir    = __DIR__ . '/vendor';
    $phpcsUtilDir = $vendorDir . '/phpcsstandards/phpcsutils';

    // Load the Composer autoload file.
    require_once $vendorDir . '/autoload.php';

    // This snippet is only needed when you use the PHPCSUtils TestUtils.
    if (file_exists($phpcsUtilDir . '/phpcsutils-autoload.php')) {
        require_once $phpcsUtilDir . '/phpcsutils-autoload.php';
    }

} elseif ($phpcsUtilDir !== false) {
    $phpcsUtilDir = realpath($phpcsUtilDir);

    require_once $phpcsUtilDir . '/phpcsutils-autoload.php';
} else {
    echo 'Uh oh... can\'t find PHPCSUtils.

If you use Composer, please run `composer install`.
Otherwise, make sure you set a `PHPCSUtils_DIR` environment variable in your phpunit.xml file
pointing to the PHPCS directory.
';

    die(1);
}

Once that's done, you will need to make a small tweak to your own dev environment to get the unit tests running for a non-Composer based install:

• Copy your project's phpunit.xml.dist file to phpunit.xml.

• Add the following to the phpunit.xml file within the <phpunit> tags, replacing /path/to/PHPCSUtils with the path in which you installed PHPCSUtils on your local system:

  <php>
      <env name="PHPCSUtils_DIR" value="/path/to/PHPCSUtils"/>
  </php>

Contributions to this project are welcome. Clone the repo, branch off from develop, make your changes, commit them and send in a pull request.

If you are unsure whether the changes you are proposing would be welcome, please open an issue first to discuss your proposal.

This code is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPLv3).