Getting started with Php Inspections (EA Extended)

Prerequisites

To get maximum benefit from using the plugin, we should agree on following:

• organizing code in classes/functions;
• using curly brackets for control statements (if/else, loops and etc.);
• using Composer would be great, as security checks can be applied to third party components;

Installation

Regular installation process includes 2 steps:

• Navigate to File -> Settings -> Plugins and click Browse Repositories. New window will popup listing available plugins.
• Type Php Inspections (EA Extended) into the top search field and install the plugin. Click OK buttons on both open windows.

After installation IDE will suggest restarting, do so to get plugin loaded.

Initial configuration

If you just started using the analyzer, it worth following those steps:

• Right click on root folder, click “Inspect code” or “Analyze”->”Inspect code”;
• Exclude all third-party components (e.g. vendor folder);
• Click “Ok” and wait for analysis completion;
• Review reported issues and decide if you want to deactivate some of them;
• It also worth reviewing entries reported in the “Probable Bugs” group at first place;

You can activate disabled inspections later in IDE settings. Also some inspections have own settings and perhaps you would want to review them before deactivating anything.

Automatic fixes for found issues

Most of inspections has so called Quick-Fixes fixing the reported issues. They are applicable in 2 ways:

• from inspection results (button with action title)
• from a bulb appearing when you placing the cursor on a reported code fragment (code is grayed out, colored and etc.);