PHPCS Setup

A comprehensive guideline to setup phpcs for a WordPress theme or plugin.

Requirements

You need to install the following softwares on your machine.

• composer
• npm
• node

Steps

1. Navigate to the project root directory.
2. Open composer.json file and add/update the codes.

"require": {
  "php": ">=7.4|^8.0",
  "composer/installers": "^1.0.12"
},

"require-dev": {
  "wp-coding-standards/wpcs": "^3.1",
  "phpcompatibility/phpcompatibility-wp": "2.1",
  "dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer": "^1.0",
  "squizlabs/php_codesniffer": "^3.10"
},

"config": {
  "allow-plugins": {
    "composer/installers": true,
    "dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer": true,
    "johnpbloch/wordpress-core-installer": true
  }
}

3. Run the command to install composer packages.

composer update

4. You will now see a bin folder inside the vendor directory.

5. Next, open the package.json file and add this code.

"lint:php": "vendor/bin/phpcs",
"lint:php:fix": "vendor/bin/phpcbf",

6. Now, copy/download the phpcs.xml file from this link and paste it to the project root directory.

7. All done. Now, we can run this command to check the php linting errors and fix them.

npm run lint:php
npm run lint:php:fix

Output:

Acknowledgement

• bluewindlab.net
• composer
• npm