How to use WordPressCS with Eclipse and XAMPP

If you are a WordPress theme/plugin developer who uses XAMPP, PHP, MySQL, and Eclipse for development, these are the steps to use the WordPress Coding Standards along with PHP CodeSniffer in Eclipse.

⚠️ Note from the maintainers ⚠️

The PEAR is not the officially supported way of installing WordPressCS, or PHP_CodeSniffer. PHP_CodeSniffer will stop supporting PEAR install with version 4.

We do recommend local Composer installation of WordPressCS. The following guide will install the older version of PHP_CodeSniffer, and WordPressCS, so take it with a grain of salt.

Step 1. Install the latest PHP CodeSniffer in XAMPP

Note: do not install PHP CodeSniffer via composer! Via Composer it will fail because the XAMPP folder after setup already contains an old CodeSniffer sub-folder inside it, so you will end up with two versions of CodeSniffer. Use the steps below instead:

1.1. Install PEAR:

To be sure you are using the latest PEAR version, not the old one included in XAMPP, download this file into C:\xampp\php\ then run it locally via PHP:

C:\xampp\php>php go-pear.phar

When you are asked for installation type ("system wide" or "locally") choose "locally". Further, use the default settings suggested by the installer.

1.2. Uninstall the old CodeSniffer (if any):

C:\xampp\php>pear uninstall PHP_CodeSniffer

uninstall ok: channel://pear.php.net/PHP_CodeSniffer-1.5.5

1.3. Install the latest CodeSniffer using PEAR:

C:\xampp\php>pear install --alldeps PHP_CodeSniffer

No releases available for package "pear.php.net/PHP_CodeSniffer"
install failed

1.4. It failed, that means we need to clear the cache:

C:\xampp\php>pear clear-cache

reading directory C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Temp\pear\cache
10 cache entries cleared

1.5. Again, try installing the latest version of the PHP_CodeSniffer package:

C:\xampp\php>pear install --alldeps PHP_CodeSniffer

WARNING: channel "pear.php.net" has updated its protocols, use "pear channel-update pear.php.net" to update
Package "pear.php.net/PHP_CodeSniffer" dependency "pear.phpunit.de/PHP_Timer" has no releases
downloading PHP_CodeSniffer-1.5.5.tgz ...
Starting to download PHP_CodeSniffer-1.5.5.tgz (412,025 bytes)
................................................................done: 412,025 bytes
install ok: channel://pear.php.net/PHP_CodeSniffer-1.5.5

1.6. Update the channel as asked above:

C:\xampp\php>pear channel-update pear.php.net

Updating channel "pear.php.net"
Update of Channel "pear.php.net" succeeded

1.7. Upgrade pear too. In case if any things are old:

C:\xampp\php>pear upgrade-all

1.8. Do a cache clear again:

C:\xampp\php>pear clear-cache

reading directory C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Temp\pear\cache
382 cache entries cleared

1.9. See the list of default coding standards in PHP CodeSniffer:

C:\xampp\php>phpcs -i

The installed coding standards are MySource, PEAR, PHPCS, PSR1, PSR2, Squiz and Zend

1.10. Navigate to the coding standards directory:

C:\xampp\php>cd pear\PHP\CodeSniffer\Standards

1.11. Fetch the WordPress coding standards into CodeSniffer’s standards directory (if the git command not working on your command prompt, you may use any gui for git clone)

C:\xampp\php\pear\PHP\CodeSniffer\Standards>git clone 
https://github.com/WordPress-Coding-Standards/WordPress-Coding-Standards.git

1.12. As, all of the individual standards of WordPress namely WordPress, WordPress-Core, WordPress-Extra, and WordPress-VIP are in one directory, for phpcs to be able to detect the standards we need to add the path to phpcs’s installed_paths:

C:\xampp\php>phpcs --config-set installed_paths c:\xampp\php\pear\PHP\CodeSniffer\Standards\WordPress-Coding-Standards

1.13. Check if all the installed standards are listed now:

C:\xampp\php>phpcs -i

The installed coding standards are MySource, PEAR, PHPCS, PSR1, PSR2, 
Squiz, Zend, WordPress, WordPress-Core, WordPress-Extra and 
WordPress-VIP

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Step 2. Install the PHP CodeSniffer plugin for Eclipse

Since the most used PHP code sniffer plugin for Eclipse is not updated yet ( http://phpsrc.org/ ) and Eclipse includes an OLD CodeSniffer version, which will not work with WordPress Coding Standards, you'll have to install this Eclipse plugin instead, which is very intuitive to use:

https://github.com/ramonamorea/com.hevada.eclipse.pti.tool.codesniffer/blob/master/plugins.7z

Unpack the package plugins.7z from the link above, into the dropins folder inside your Eclipse installation folder.

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Step 3. Setup the PHP CodeSniffer preferences in Eclipse:

In Eclipse. go to Window -> Preferences -> PHP Tools -> PHP CodeSniffer and set up it like this:

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Step 4. View the sniffer output:

To view the output of the sniffer with WordPress Coding Standards, check (enable) the automatic build from Eclipse menu: Project - Build Automatically, then open the Problems view from: Eclipse menu -> Window -> Show view -> Problems. Wait for the build to complete and all the coding problems will appear in the Problems view.