GaryJones / phpcs-variable-analysis

Variables plugin for PHP Codesniffer static analysis tool.

PHP_CodeSniffer VariableAnalysis

Plugin for PHP_CodeSniffer static analysis tool that adds analysis of problematic variable use.

• Performs static analysis of variable use.
• Warns on use of undefined variables.
• Warns if variables are set or declared but never used within that scope.
• Warns if variables are redeclared within same scope.
• Warns if $this, self::$static_member, static::$static_member is used outside class scope.

Installation

Requirements

VariableAnalysis requires PHP 5.4 or higher and PHP CodeSniffer version 3.0.2 or higher.

With PHPCS Composer Installer

This is the easiest method.

First, install phpcodesniffer-composer-installer for your project if you have not already. This will also install PHPCS.

composer require --dev dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer

Then install these standards.

composer require --dev sirbrillig/phpcs-variable-analysis

You can then include the sniffs by adding a line like the following to your phpcs.xml file.

<rule ref="VariableAnalysis"/>

It should just work after that!

Standalone

1. Install PHP_CodeSniffer by following its installation instructions (via Composer, Phar file, PEAR, or Git checkout).

   Do ensure that PHP_CodeSniffer's version matches our requirements

2. Clone the repository:

    git clone -b master https://github.com/sirbrillig/VariableAnalysis.git VariableAnalysis
   

3. Add its path to the PHP_CodeSniffer configuration:

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

If you already have installed paths, use a comma to separate them.

Customization

There's a variety of options to customize the behaviour of VariableAnalysis, take a look at the included ruleset.xml.example for commented examples of a configuration.

The available options are as follows:

• allowUnusedFunctionParameters (bool, default false): if set to true, function arguments will never be marked as unused.
• allowUnusedCaughtExceptions (bool, default false): if set to true, caught Exception variables will never be marked as unused.
• validUnusedVariableNames (string, default null): a space-separated list of names of placeholder variables that you want to ignore from unused variable warnings. For example, to ignore the variables $junk and $unused, this could be set to 'junk unused'.
• ignoreUnusedRegexp (string, default null): a PHP regexp string (note that this requires explicit delimiters) for variables that you want to ignore from unused variable warnings. For example, to ignore the variables $_junk and $_unused, this could be set to '/^_/'.

To set these these options, you must use XML in your ruleset. For details, see the phpcs customizable sniff properties page. Here is an example that ignores all variables that start with an underscore:

<rule ref="VariableAnalysis.CodeAnalysis.VariableAnalysis">
    <properties>
        <property name="ignoreUnusedRegexp" value="/^_/"/>
    </properties>
</rule>

See Also

• ImportDetection: A set of phpcs sniffs to look for unused or unimported symbols.

Original

This was forked from the excellent work in https://github.com/illusori/PHP_Codesniffer-VariableAnalysis

Contributing

Please open issues or PRs on this repository.

To run tests, make sure composer is installed, then run:

composer install # you only need to do this once
composer test