pretty-php: the opinionated code formatter

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

It looks after the whitespace in your code so you have more time and energy for the content.

Inspired by Black, pretty-php aims to produce the smallest diffs possible and for code to look the same regardless of the project you're working on, eliminating visual dissonance and improving the effectiveness of code review.

You can run pretty-php from the command line, use it in your editor, add it to your CI workflows, pair it with your preferred linter, and more.

It has sensible defaults and runs without configuration.

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

Features

• Formats code written for PHP 8.4 and below (when running on a compatible version of PHP), including property hooks introduced in PHP 8.4
• Code is formatted for readability, consistency, and small diffs
• Previous formatting is ignored, and nothing other than whitespace is changed (see Pragmatism for exceptions)
• 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
• Formatted and original code are compared for equivalence
• Compliant with PSR-12 and PER (see PSR-12 compliance for details)
• Supports Symfony, Drupal, Laravel and WordPress code styles via presets

Installation

Requirements

• Linux, macOS or Windows
• PHP 8.4, 8.3, 8.2, 8.1, 8.0 or 7.4 with the standard tokenizer, mbstring and json extensions enabled

PHP archive (PHAR)

pretty-php is distributed as a PHP archive you can download and run:

wget -O pretty-php.phar https://github.com/lkrms/pretty-php/releases/latest/download/pretty-php.phar

php pretty-php.phar --version

The PHAR can be made executable:

chmod +x pretty-php.phar

./pretty-php.phar --version

Official releases distributed via GitHub are signed and can be verified as follows:

wget -O pretty-php.phar https://github.com/lkrms/pretty-php/releases/latest/download/pretty-php.phar
wget -O pretty-php.phar.asc https://github.com/lkrms/pretty-php/releases/latest/download/pretty-php.phar.asc
gpg --recv-keys 0xE8CC5BC780B581F2
gpg --verify pretty-php.phar.asc pretty-php.phar

Installation with PHIVE, which verifies PHAR releases automatically, is also supported:

phive install lkrms/pretty-php

./tools/pretty-php --version

Adding lkrms/pretty-php to your project as a Composer dependency is not recommended. A separate API package will be provided in the future.

Arch Linux

Arch Linux users can install pretty-php from the AUR. For example, if your preferred AUR helper is yay:

yay -S pretty-php

macOS

Homebrew users on macOS can install pretty-php using the following command, which automatically taps lkrms/misc if necessary:

brew install lkrms/misc/pretty-php

Usage

Once installed, getting started with pretty-php is as simple as giving it something to format. For example, to format bootstrap.php and any PHP files in the src directory:

pretty-php bootstrap.php src

To see what would change without actually replacing any files, add the --diff option:

pretty-php --diff bootstrap.php src

For detailed usage information, see usage or run:

pretty-php --help

Editor integrations

• pretty-php for Visual Studio Code
  Official VS Code extension
  Visual Studio Marketplace | Open VSX Registry | Repository

Pragmatism

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

• Some newlines are preserved
  Line breaks adjacent to most operators, delimiters and brackets are copied from the input to the output (see Newlines for details).

  Use -N/--ignore-newlines, -O/--operators-first or -L/--operators-last to disable or modify this behaviour.

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

  Use -S/--no-simplify-strings and -n/--no-simplify-numbers to disable or modify this behaviour.

• Imports are grouped and sorted by name, depth-first
  See Import sorting for details.

  Use -M/--no-sort-imports or -m/--sort-imports-by to disable or modify this behaviour.

• Comments are moved if necessary for correct placement of adjacent tokens
  Use --disable=move-comments to disable this behaviour.

• Comments beside code are not moved to the next line

• Comments are trimmed and aligned

• Empty DocBlocks are removed

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.