Code-Checker is a tool distributed by Moodle HQ which lets you validate code against core coding standards. You install it as a local plugin in a development environment and run it against specified files. It then spits out all kinds of nit-picky errors:
theme/stellar/layout/default.php
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#76: ····<?php·//·echo·$OUTPUT->page_heading();·?>
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This comment is 67% valid code; is this commented out code?
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Inline comments must start with a capital letter, digit or 3-dots sequence
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Inline comments must end in full-stops, exclamation marks, or question marks
Code-Checker leverages the PHP_CodeSniffer tool; in essence it’s a set of CodeSniffer definitions wrapped in a Moodle plugin. This adds a fair amount of overhead for testing coding standards–you shouldn’t need a functional Moodle environment, nor for that matter a web server.
My preferred integration tool is gulp.js, a task-runner built on node. It’s similar to grunt but without all the front-loaded configuration. There’s a plugin for gulp called gulp-phpcs which integrates PHP_CodeSniffer with gulp and lets you check the files in your project. Happily it was pretty simple to do this with Moodle.
First, you need to have PHP_CodeSniffer available in your development environment. This is how I did it on my Macbook:
cd /usr/local mkdir scripts cd scripts git clone https://github.com/squizlabs/PHP_CodeSniffer.git phpcs
I then added that directory to my PATH:
PATH=/usr/local/scripts/phpcs/scripts:$PATH
Finally, I cloned in the Moodle plugin and added its standards definition to the installed paths for PHP_CodeSniffer:
git clone https://github.com/moodlehq/moodle-local_codechecker.git moodlecs cd phpcs ./scripts/phpcs --config-set installed_paths ../moodlecs
At this point we’re ready to integrate it into gulp. We need to install the gulp-phpcs module and add it to the project:
npm install gulp-phpcs --save-dev
Now we provide a basic configuration in our gulpfile.js. This example will check all the php files in Lafayette’s Stellar theme:
// List of modules used. var gulp = require('gulp'), phpcs = require('gulp-phpcs'); // Moodle standards. // Moodle coding standards. gulp.task('standards', function() { return gulp.src(['*.php', './layout/**/*.php', './lang/**/*.php']) .pipe(phpcs({ standard: 'moodle' })) .pipe(phpcs.reporter('log')); });
Invoked from the command line, we get the same results as from the web interface, but faster and without the overhead:
[10:24:21] PHP Code Sniffer found a problem in ../theme_stellar/layout/default.php Message: Error: Command failed: FILE: STDIN -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FOUND 0 ERROR(S) AND 3 WARNING(S) AFFECTING 1 LINE(S) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 76 | WARNING | Inline comments must start with a capital letter, digit or | | 3-dots sequence 76 | WARNING | Inline comments must end in full-stops, exclamation marks, or | | question marks 76 | WARNING | This comment is 67% valid code; is this commented out code? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This also lets you create watcher tasks to catch errors introduced while developing.
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