pretty-php: the opinionated code formatter for Visual Studio Code

This extension integrates the latest release of pretty-php with VS Code.

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pretty-php is a fast, deterministic, minimally configurable code formatter for PHP.

By taking responsibility for the whitespace in your code, pretty-php makes it easier to focus on the content, providing time and mental energy savings that accrue over time.

Code formatted by pretty-php produces the smallest diffs possible and looks the same regardless of the project you're working on, eliminating visual dissonance and improving the speed and effectiveness of code review.

Aside from running it in VS Code, you can use pretty-php as a standalone tool, pair it with a linter, or add it to your CI workflows. Configuration is optional in each case.

If you have questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you.

pretty-php isn't stable yet, so updates may introduce formatting changes that affect your code.

Features

• Supports code written for PHP 8.3 and below (when running on a PHP version that can parse it)
• Code is formatted for readability, consistency and small diffs
• With few exceptions, previous formatting is ignored, and nothing in the original file other than whitespace is changed
• Entire files are formatted in place
• Formatting options are deliberately limited (pretty-php is opinionated so you don't have to be)
• Configuration via a simple JSON file is supported but not required
• PHP's embedded tokenizer is used to parse input and validate output
• Formatted and original code are compared for equivalence
• Output is optionally compliant with PSR-12 and PER (details here and here)

Configuration

To configure pretty-php, you can use the extension's VS Code settings, or you can add a configuration file to your project.

VS Code settings are ignored if an applicable .prettyphp or prettyphp.json file is found.

To create a configuration file based on your current VS Code settings, use the extension's "Create .prettyphp or prettyphp.json" command. The bundled JSON schema for pretty-php configuration files makes them easy to edit in VS Code:

More information about configuring pretty-php is available here.

Examples

Minimal

{
  "src": ["."]
}

• Enforce the default code style
• Format *.php files in the directory and its descendants

PSR-12 compliant

{
  "src": ["bin", "src", "tests/unit", "bootstrap.php"],
  "includeIfPhp": true,
  "psr12": true
}

• Enforce the default code style
• Enable strict PSR-12/PER compliance
• Format *.php files, and files with no extension that appear to be PHP files, in the bin, src and tests/unit directories and their descendants
• Format bootstrap.php

Requirements

• PHP 8.3, 8.2, 8.1, 8.0 or 7.4 with the standard tokenizer, mbstring and json extensions enabled

Pragmatism

pretty-php generally abides by its own rules ("previous formatting is ignored, and nothing in the original file other than whitespace is changed"), but exceptions are occasionally made and documented here.

• Newlines are preserved
  Line breaks adjacent to most operators, delimiters and brackets are copied from the input to the output.

  To suppress this behaviour temporarily, use the "Format PHP without Preserving Newlines" command.

• Strings and numbers are normalised
  Single-quoted strings are preferred unless the alternative is shorter or backslash escapes are required.

  Use the "Formatting: Simplify Strings" and "Formatting: Simplify Numbers" settings to disable or modify this behaviour.

• Alias/import statements are grouped and sorted alphabetically
  The "Formatting: Sort Imports By" setting can be used to disable or modify this behaviour.

• Comments are moved if necessary for correct placement of adjacent tokens
  Relocated DocBlocks are converted to standard C-style comments as a precaution.

  Turn the "Formatting: Move Comments" setting off to disable this behaviour.

• Comments beside code are not moved to the next line

• Comments are trimmed and aligned

• Empty DocBlocks are removed

License

MIT