PHPMD - PHP Mess Detector

Command line usage

Type phpmd [filenamedirectory[,...]]] [report format] [ruleset file], i.e: :

mapi@arwen ~ $ phpmd PHP/Depend/DbusUI/ xml rulesets/codesize.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<pmd version="0.0.1" timestamp="2009-12-19T22:17:18+01:00">
  <file name="/projects/pdepend/PHP/Depend/DbusUI/ResultPrinter.php">
    <violation beginline="67"
               endline="224"
               rule="TooManyMethods"
               ruleset="Code Size Rules"
               package="PHP_Depend\DbusUI"
               class="PHP_Depend_DbusUI_ResultPrinter"
               priority="3">
      This class has too many methods, consider refactoring it.
    </violation>
  </file>
</pmd>

You can pass a comma-separated string with list of file names or a directory names, containing PHP source code to PHPMD.

The PHPMD Phar distribution includes the rule set files inside its archive, even if the "rulesets/codesize.xml" parameter above looks like a filesystem reference.

Command line options

Notice that the default output is in XML, so you can redirect it to a file and XSLT it or whatever
You can also use shortened names to refer to the built-in rule sets, like this: :: phpmd PHP/Depend/DbusUI/ xml codesize
The command line interface also accepts the following optional arguments:

--verbose, -v, -vv, -vvv - The output verbosity level. Will print more information what is being processed or cached. Will be send to STDERR to not interfere with report output. text output will also have under each error a link to the documentation of the rule and format the location in a way that most IDEs will convert into a link to open the file at the line of the error when clicked.
--minimumpriority --min-priority --minimum-priority - The rule priority threshold; rules with lower priority than they will not be used.
--maximumpriority --max-priority --maximum-priority - The rule priority threshold; rules with higher priority than this will not be used.
--reportfile --report-file - Sends the report output to the specified file, instead of the default output target STDOUT.
--error-file - Sends errors (other than reported violations) output to a file; defaults to STDERR,
--suffixes - Comma-separated string of valid source code filename extensions, e.g. php, phtml.
--exclude - Comma-separated string of patterns that are used to ignore directories. Use asterisks to exclude by pattern. For example *src/foo/*.php or *src/foo/*
--strict - Also report those nodes with a @SuppressWarnings annotation.
--not-strict - Does not report those nodes with a @SuppressWarnings annotation.
--ignore-errors-on-exit - will exit with a zero code, even on error.
--ignore-violations-on-exit - will exit with a zero code, even if any violations are found.
--cache - will enable the result cache. Will default to .phpmd.result-cache.php in the current working directory.
--cache-file - in cooperation with --cache will override the default result cache file path of .phpmd.result-cache.php to the given file path.
--cache-strategy - sets the caching strategy to determine if a file is still fresh. Either `content` to base it on the file contents, or `timestamp` to base it on the file modified timestamp.
--generate-baseline - will generate a phpmd.baseline.xml for existing violations next to the ruleset definition file. The file paths of the violations will be relative to the current working directory.
--update-baseline - will remove all violations from an existing phpmd.baseline.xml that no longer exist. New violations will _not be added. The file path of the violations will be relative to the current working directory.
--baseline-file - the filepath to a custom baseline xml file. If absent will default to phpmd.baseline.xml
--color - enable color in output, for instance text renderer will show rule name in yellow and error description in red. An example command line: :: phpmd PHP/Depend/DbusUI xml codesize --reportfile phpmd.xml --suffixes php,phtml

Using multiple rule sets

PHPMD uses so called rule sets that configure/define a set of rules which will be applied against the source under test. The default distribution of PHPMD is already shipped with a few default sets, that can be used out-of-box. You can call PHPMD's cli tool with a set's name to apply this configuration: :

~ $ phpmd /path/to/source text codesize

But what if you would like to apply more than one rule set against your source? You can also pass a list of rule set names, separated by comma to PHPMD's cli tool: :

~ $ phpmd /path/to/source text codesize,unusedcode,naming

You can also mix custom rule set files with build-in rule sets: :

~ $ phpmd /path/to/source text codesize,/my/rules.xml

That's it. With this behavior you can specify you own combination of rule sets that will check the source code.

Using multiple source files and folders

PHPMD also allows you to specify multiple source directories in case you want to create one output for certain parts of your code :

~ $ phpmd /path/to/code,index.php,/another/place/with/code text codesize

Or use glob pattern: :

~ $ phpmd src/main/php/*/*/*{Renderer,Node}.php text my/rules.xml

Scan input

PHPMD can also read the standard input `stdin`: :

~ $ cat src/MyService.php | phpmd - text my/rules.xml

So the PHP code to be scanned may be generated by an other program not necessarily to be store in file.

Exit codes

PHPMD's command line tool currently defines four different exit codes.

0, This exit code indicates that everything worked as expected. This means there was no error/exception and PHPMD hasn't detected any rule violation in the code under test.
1, This exit code indicates that an exception occurred which has interrupted PHPMD during execution.
2, This exit code means that PHPMD has processed the code under test without the occurrence of an error/exception, but it has detected rule violations in the analyzed source code. You can also prevent this behaviour with the --ignore-violations-on-exit flag, which will result to a 0 even if any violations are found.
3, This exit code means that one or multiple files under test could not be processed because of an error. There may also be violations in other files that could be processed correctly.

Renderers

At the moment PHPMD comes with the following renderers:

xml, which formats the report as XML.
text, simple textual format.
ansi, colorful, formatted text for the command line.
html, single HTML file with possible problems.
json, formats JSON report.
gitlab, a format that GitLab CI understands.
github, a format that GitHub Actions understands (see CI Integration).

Some more formats can be obtained by conversion such as:

junit can be obtained using xsltproc` package on the Debian-based systems or `libxslt` on Alpine and CentOS. with this given `junit.xslt config file:

~ $ phpmd src xml cleancode | xsltproc junit.xslt -

Baseline

For existing projects a violation baseline can be generated. All violations in this baseline will be ignored in further inspections.

The recommended approach would be a phpmd.xml in the root of the project. To generate the phpmd.baseline.xml next to it:

~ $ phpmd /path/to/source text phpmd.xml --generate-baseline

To specify a custom baseline filepath for export:

~ $ phpmd /path/to/source text phpmd.xml --generate-baseline --baseline-file /path/to/source/phpmd.baseline.xml

By default PHPMD will look next to phpmd.xml for phpmd.baseline.xml. To overwrite this behaviour:

~ $ phpmd /path/to/source text phpmd.xml --baseline-file /path/to/source/phpmd.baseline.xml

To clean up an existing baseline file and only remove no longer existing violations:

~ $ phpmd /path/to/source text phpmd.xml --update-baseline