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.

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"

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

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.

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

Drupal Code Sniffer can be used with various editors.

Editors:

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

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

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!

[//]: # 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

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