Moxio PHP_CodeSniffer sniffs

This is a collection of our custom PHP_Codesniffer (3.x) sniffs for detecting potential bugs and unexpected behavior in PHP code. It may be used as a ruleset on its own, but it is mainly intended as a set of separate sniffs that can be integrated into other standards.

We described the motivation behind some of these sniffs on our blog.

Installation and usage

Install as a development dependency using composer:

$ composer require --dev moxio/php-codesniffer-sniffs

Check your files against this set of sniffs:

$ ./vendor/bin/phpcs --standard=vendor/moxio/php-codesniffer-sniffs/MoxioSniffs path/to/your/files

Description of sniffs

More sniffs will be added soon.

MoxioSniffs.PHP.DisallowBareContinueInSwitch: Disallows the continue statement without a numeric argument when used directly within a switch-case. This prevents silent bugs caused by PHP considering switch to be a looping structure.

MoxioSniffs.PHP.DisallowImplicitLooseComparison: Disallows implicit non-strict comparisons by functions like in_array and array_search. Requires that the $strict-parameter to these functions is explicitly set. This prevents hidden bugs due to counter-intuitive behavior of non-strict comparison.

MoxioSniffs.PHP.DisallowImplicitLooseBase64Decode: Disallows implicit non-strict usage of the base64_decode function. Requires that the $strict-parameter to this function is explicitly set.

MoxioSniffs.PHP.DisallowUniqidWithoutMoreEntropy: Disallows calls to uniqid() without $more_entropy = true. When $more_entropy is false (which is the default), uniqid() calls usleep() to avoid collisions, which can be a substantial performance hit. Always calling uniqid() with $more_entropy = true avoids these problems.

MoxioSniffs.PHP.DisallowArrayCombinersWithSingleArray: Disallows calls to functions that combine two or more arrays with only a single array given as an argument. This applies to functions like array_merge(_recursive), array_replace(_recursive) and all variants of array_diff and array_intersect. Such a call does not make sense, and is most likely a result of a misplaced comma or parenthesis. To re-index a single array, just use array_values.

MoxioSniffs.PHP.DisallowImplicitMicrotimeAsString: Disallows calls to microtime() without the $get_as_float argument being explicitly set. By default, microtime has a string as its return value ("msec sec"), which is unexpected and cannot be naively cast to float, making it error-prone. It is still possible to set this argument to false, but in that case you have probably thought about this.

MoxioSniffs.PHP.DisallowImplicitIteratorToArrayWithUseKeys: Disallows calls to iterator_to_array() without the $use_keys argument being explicitly set. By default, iterator_to_array uses the keys provided by the iterator. This behavior is often desired for associative arrays, but can cause unexpected results for 'list-like' arrays. Explicitly requiring the parameter to be set ensures that the developer has to think about which behavior is desired for the situation at hand.

MoxioSniffs.PHP.DisallowDateTime: Disallows usage of \DateTime and promotes the use of \DateTimeImmutable instead. The former being mutable can lead to some subtle but nasty bugs. See this post for more background on why you would want to discourage using \DateTime.

MoxioSniffs.PHP.DisallowMbDetectEncoding: Disallows usage of mb_detect_encoding. This function has a misleading name that implies it can actually detect the encoding of a string, a problem which is generally impossible. Rather it checks a list of encodings until it finds one that could be the right one (i.e. the string is a valid byte sequence according to that encoding). Using mb_check_encoding (possibly in a loop) instead makes this much more explicit. See this talk for more background information on this topic.

MoxioSniffs.PHP.DisallowUtf8EncodeDecode: Disallows calls to utf8_encode() and utf8_decode(). These functions can be considered misleading because they only convert to/from ISO-8859-1, and do not 'magically' detect the source/target encoding. Using iconv() or mb_convert_encoding() instead makes both character encodings that play a role in the conversion explicit.

MoxioSniffs.PHP.DisallowDateCreateFromFormatWithUnspecifiedTimeComponent: Disallows calls to \DateTime::createFromFormat, \DateTimeImmutable::createFromFormat, date_create_from_format & date_create_immutable_from_format with formats which do not specify a time component and do not initialize fields to null. This would otherwise create DateTime(Immutable) objects with a time component set to the current (creation) time, which is probably never what you want and can be a source of bugs.

Running tests

After installing dependencies (including development dependencies) using Composer, run

$ ./vendor/bin/phpunit

from the project root dir.

Versioning

This project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

Please note that, from the perspective of this library as a pick-and-match collection of sniffs (and not a complete coding standard), the addition of new sniffs will not be considered a breaking change and thus does not cause an increase in the major version number.

License

These sniffs are released under the MIT license.