Coder

Coder is a library for automated Drupal code reviews and coding standard fixes. It defines rules for PHP_CodeSniffer

Built-in support for:

• "Drupal": Coding Standards https://www.drupal.org/coding-standards
• "DrupalPractice": Best practices for Drupal module development

Online documentation: https://www.drupal.org/node/1419980

Note that Javascript support has been removed. To check and fix Javascript files please use ESLint and see the Drupal ESLint documentation.

Global installation

First, make sure Composer is installed correctly:

which composer

If you get composer not found or similar, follow Composer's installation instructions.

Install Coder (8.3.x) in your global Composer directory in your home directory (~/.config/composer):

composer global require drupal/coder

To make the phpcs and phpcbf commands available globally, add the Composer bin path to your $PATH variable in ~/.profile, ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:

export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.config/composer/vendor/bin"

Usage

Check Drupal coding standards

phpcs --standard=Drupal --extensions=php,module,inc,install,test,profile,theme,css,info,txt,md,yml /file/to/drupal/example_module

Check Drupal best practices

phpcs --standard=DrupalPractice --extensions=php,module,inc,install,test,profile,theme,css,info,txt,md,yml /file/to/drupal/example_module

Automatically fix coding standards

phpcbf --standard=Drupal --extensions=php,module,inc,install,test,profile,theme,css,info,txt,md,yml /file/to/drupal/example_module

Local installation in your Drupal project

For collaborating developer teams it makes sense to lock a Coder version with your other development dependencies locally. In your project where you have your composer.json file execute this:

composer require --dev drupal/coder

Then you can run Coder on your custom module code like this:

./vendor/bin/phpcs --standard=Drupal --extensions=php,module,inc,install,test,profile,theme,css,info,txt,md,yml web/modules/custom

To simplify execution it is highly recommended to use a settings file, see below.

Store settings in a phpcs.xml.dist file

In order to save and commit your PHPCS settings to Git you can use a phpcs.xml.dist file in your project like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ruleset name="example">
  <description>PHP CodeSniffer configuration for example development.</description>
  <!-- Check all files in the current directory and below. -->
  <file>.</file>
  <arg name="extensions" value="php,module,inc,install,test,profile,theme,css,info,txt,md,yml"/>
  <!-- Change this value to 7 if you want to check Drupal 7 code. -->
  <config name="drupal_core_version" value="8"/>

  <!-- If you have Coder installed locally then you can reference the Drupal
  standards with relative paths. Otherwise simply use "Drupal" and
  "DrupalPractice. -->
  <rule ref="../vendor/drupal/coder/coder_sniffer/Drupal">
    <!-- Example how you would disable a rule you are not compliant with yet:
    <exclude name="Drupal.Commenting.Deprecated"/>
    -->
  </rule>
  <rule ref="../vendor/drupal/coder/coder_sniffer/DrupalPractice"/>

  <!-- Example how you would disable an external rule you do not like:
  <rule ref="PEAR.Functions.ValidDefaultValue.NotAtEnd">
    <severity>0</severity>
  </rule>
  -->
</ruleset>

Then you can invoke phpcs without any options and it will read phpcs.xml.dist from the current directory. This can also be useful for Continuous Integration setups. Example:

./vendor/bin/phpcs -p

Working with Editors

Drupal Code Sniffer can be used with various editors.

Editors:

• Atom
• Eclipse
• Komodo
• Netbeans
• PhpStorm
• Sublime Text
• Vim
• Visual Studio Code (VSCode)

Automated Testing (PHPUnit + PHPCS + PHPStan)

Coder Sniffer comes with a PHPUnit test suite to make sure the sniffs work correctly. Use Composer to install the dependencies:

composer install

Then execute the tests:

./vendor/bin/phpunit

Then execute the coding standards checker on Coder itself:

./vendor/bin/phpcs

Then execute static analysis:

./vendor/bin/phpstan

Contributing

1. Make sure an issue exists at https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/coder
2. Create a Pull Request against https://github.com/pfrenssen/coder
3. Post a link to the pull request to the issue on drupal.org and set the issue to "needs review"

Thank you!

Maintainers

[//]: # cspell:ignore Pieter Frenssen Welford

• Pieter Frenssen, https://www.drupal.org/u/pfrenssen
• Michael Welford, https://www.drupal.org/u/mikejw
• Klaus Purer, https://www.drupal.org/u/klausi

Credits

Greg Sherwood and Squiz Pty Ltd, many sniffs are modified copies of their original work on PHPCS.