Archive for August, 2014

Geany PHP Beautifier

Saturday, August 16th, 2014

PHP Beautifier Support for Geany

Geany is by far one of the best text editors I have come across that works on both Windows and Linux.  It is also one of the most aesthetically pleasing editors to look at right out of the box.  I do a lot of PHP scripting, and as such, it is nice to have a "beautifier" script that will automatically format my code for me so that it looks nice.  Geany can also call the php executable and check your script syntax. You can achieve both of these features by installing both PHP for Windows and the PHP Beautifier PEAR addon.   

Install PHP for Windows:

If you code your PHP scripts in Windows, you'll want to use syntax checking and the PHP_Beautifier script.  To do so, you must install the PHP5 Windows package, which includes the main PHP binaries.

To get the files, download the latest version of PHP 5.3.

Extract the contents of the archive to "C:\php5"

Go into C:\php5 and rename "php.ini-development" to "php.ini".

PHP BEAUTIFIER WILL NOT WORK ON ANY NEW VERSION OF PHP FROM 5.4.X and UP!

Install PEAR for Windows:

PHP_Beautifier relies on PEAR functionality.  To install pear, save this file using a browser and place it in the "C:\php5" directory.  

Start command prompt, change directory into "C:\php5", and run the phar script:

C:\
cd C:\php5
php go-pear.phar

Install everything and keep default options.

Install PHP_Beautifier:

Now, install PHP Beautifier by running the following commands:

pear install PHP_Beautifier

Integration in Geany:

For PHP Syntax Checking:

In Geany, click on "Edit" in the menu bar and choose "Preferences".

In the "General" and "Startup" tabs, under the "Paths" section, paste "C:\php5" (without the quotes) into the "Extra plugin path:" field.

For PHP Beautifier:

Start the Geany text editor program.  Open a PHP script file.

Select the code you want to format, right click on the selected text, and choose "Format" –> "Send Selection to" –> "Set Custom Commands".

For command, use the following:

php C:\\php5\\php_beautifier -s4 -l "ArrayNested() NewLines(before=T_COMMENT:for:switch:foreach:T_CLASS:function:T_CLOSE_TAG,after=T_ENDIF:T_CLOSE_TAG:T_OPEN_TAG:T_ENDSWITCH:T_ENDWHILE:T_ENDFOR:T_ENDFOREACH)"

For "Label", use "PHP Beautifier"

Hit OK.

Now, select the code you want to format, right click on the selected text, and choose "Format" –> "Send Selection to" –> and pick "PHP Beautifier".  The code should now be formatted using the options specified in the command line arguments above.

For more filter options and commandline parameters, please read this PHP_Beautifier document.