Fix 'Drupal.Semantics.ConstantName.ConstantStart' coding standard

Created on 28 April 2016, over 8 years ago
Updated 4 May 2023, over 1 year ago

Part of 🌱 [meta] Fix PHP coding standards in core Active .

This sniff relates to Constants β†’ in the Coding Standards β†’ .

Approach

We are testing coding standards with PHP CodeSniffer, using the Drupal coding standards from the Coder module. Both of these packages are not installed in Drupal core. We need to do a couple of steps in order to download and configure them so we can run a coding standards check.

Step 1: Add the coding standard to the whitelist

Every coding standard is identified by a "sniff". For example, an imaginary coding standard that would require all llamas to be placed inside a square bracket fence would be called the "Drupal.AnimalControlStructure.BracketedFence sniff". There are dozens of such coding standards, and to make the work easier we have started by only whitelisting the sniffs that pass. For the moment all coding standards that are not yet fixed are simply skipped during the test.

Open the file core/phpcs.xml.dist and add a line for the sniff of this ticket. The sniff name is in the issue title. Make sure your patch will include the addition of this line.

Step 2: Install PHP CodeSniffer and the ruleset from the Coder module

Both of these packages are not installed by default in Drupal core, so we need to download them. This can be done with Composer, from the root folder of your Drupal installation:

$ composer require drupal/coder squizlabs/php_codesniffer
$ ./vendor/bin/phpcs --config-set installed_paths ../../drupal/coder/coder_sniffer

Once you have installed the phpcs package, you can list all the sniffs available to you like this:

$ ./vendor/bin/phpcs --standard=Drupal -e

This will give you a big list of sniffs, and the Drupal-based ones should be present.

Step 3: Prepare the phpcs.xml file

To speed up the testing you should make a copy of the file phpcs.xml.dist (in the core/ folder) and save it as phpcs.xml. This is the configuration file for PHP CodeSniffer.

We only want this phpcs.xml file to specify the sniff we're interested in. So we need to remove all the rule items, and add only our own sniff's rule. Rule items look like this:

<rule ref="Drupal.Classes.UnusedUseStatement"/>

Remove all of them, and add only the sniff from this issue title. This will make sure that our tests run quickly, and are not going to contain any output from unrelated sniffs.

Step 4: Run the test

Now you are ready to run the test! From within the core/ folder, run the following command to launch the test:

$ cd core/
$ ../vendor/bin/phpcs -p

This takes a couple of minutes. The -p flag shows the progress, so you have a bunch of nice dots to look at while it is running.

Step 5: Fix the failures

When the test is complete it will present you a list of all the files that contain violations of your sniff, and the line numbers where the violations occur. You could fix all of these manually, but thankfully phpcbf can fix many of them. You can call phpcbf like this:

$ ../vendor/bin/phpcbf

This will fix the errors in place. You can then make a diff of the changes using git. You can also re-run the test with phpcs and determine if that fixed all of them.

πŸ“Œ Task
Status

Needs review

Version

10.1 ✨

Component
OtherΒ  β†’

Last updated 32 minutes ago

Created by

πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States mile23 Seattle, WA

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  • Coding standards

    It involves compliance with, or the content of coding standards. Requires broad community agreement.

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  • last update over 1 year ago
    29,374 pass
  • πŸ‡³πŸ‡ΏNew Zealand quietone

    The constants in the search.module were removed in #3261239: Remove deprecations from search module β†’ . I think that the sniff can be enabled now.

  • πŸ‡³πŸ‡ΏNew Zealand quietone
  • Status changed to Needs work over 1 year ago
  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States smustgrave

    Assuming I tested correctly

    I applied the patch in #33

    Added define('TEST', 'Hello'); to the action.module and ran the commit-code-check.sh script. It caught the error

    But if I changed it to CONST TEST = 'Hello'; it does not catch it and shows it passed.

  • Status changed to Postponed over 1 year ago
  • πŸ‡³πŸ‡ΏNew Zealand quietone

    The doc bloc for the sniff explains that it only checks define. And the earlier comments in the issue reflect that, there is no discussion about sniffing constants defined with 'const'.

    I made an issue in coder to get some information. I am postponing this until there is feedback there to inform what to do next here.
    ✨ Add checking 'const' to Drupal.Semantics.ConstantName.ConstantStart Fixed

  • Status changed to Active 7 months ago
  • πŸ‡³πŸ‡ΏNew Zealand quietone

    The related issue was fixed over a year ago.

    However, the test run in #33 passed despite there being constants PREG_CLASS_NUMBERS is the search module, in

    The constant PREG_CLASS_NUMBERS in core/modules/search/src/SearchTextProcessorInterface.php is not reported as an error. The coding standards β†’ state "Module-defined constant names should also be prefixed by an uppercase spelling of the module that defines them." so that should be detected, I think.

    I tested again with the constant, DOG, in search.module and that wasn't detected either.

  • Status changed to Postponed 2 months ago
  • πŸ‡³πŸ‡ΏNew Zealand quietone
  • Status changed to Active 2 days ago
  • πŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΉAustria klausi πŸ‡¦πŸ‡Ή Vienna

    The constant PREG_CLASS_NUMBERS is defined on an interface - so it does not need to be prefixed with the module name.

    Only global constants must be prefixed with the module name.

    Note that we must not introduce any new global constants. All constants need to be defined on classes/interfaces for autoloading.

    Maybe the coding standards need to be updated to clarify that? "Global constants are forbidden in the global scope for new code. Constants must be defined on interfaces or classes. Old global module-defined constants that cannot be removed for compatibility reasons should also be prefixed by an uppercase spelling of the module that defines them."

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