WordPress CodeSniffer

CodeSniffer is a PEAR package that checks PHP code for violations of coding standards. According to the developers:

It is an essential development tool that ensures your code remains clean and consistent. It can also help prevent some common semantic errors made by developers.

While it won’t make you bug-free, it is another tool to help you produce better quality code, and is very useful when working with a team of developers. CodeSniffer thoughtfully comes with several standards to verify code against the PEAR, Zend, and Squiz coding standards. What follows is a CodeSniffer standard that adheres to the WordPress Coding Standard. Hurray for coding violations!

The WordPress Coding Standard will check for:

• Brace usage
• Spaces around logic statements, assignments, functions, and classes
• No CamelCase function names
• Deprecated WordPress functions usage, with suggested alternatives
• Use of posix regular expressions
• Filenames with an underscore

Installation

Details about how to install CodeSniffer can be found at the CodeSniffer site. The WordPress Coding Standard can be installed by following these steps:

1. Download PHP_CodeSniffer_Standards_WordPress-0.0.1.tgz
2. Install using pear install PHP_CodeSniffer_Standards_WordPress-0.0.1.tgz

Alternatively if you do not have access to the pear command you can install it manually:

1. Download PHP_CodeSniffer_Standards_WordPress-0.0.1.tgz
2. Unpack
3. Copy PHP_CodeSniffer_Standards_WordPress-0.0.1/WordPress into [YOUR_PEAR_DIRECTORY]/PHP/CodeSniffer/Standards

Usage

Full details of using CodeSniffer can be found at the CodeSniffer site. To use the WordPress Coding Standard you can specify it as an argument:

phpcs --standard=WordPress your-file.php

Alternatively you can set the WordPress Coding standard to be your default:

phpcs --config-set default_standard WordPress

Caveats

Please note that the WordPress standard is not foolproof and it can be very (very) pedantic. It is currently in a very early state and is being released in the hope that others may contribute.