Integrations: PhpStorm, VS Code, GitHub

Every great tool can be hard to use. Especially if they are an inconvenience or something you have to remember each time. For example, you wouldn't want to go into your terminal and run ./vendor/bin/phpstan analyse every time you want to run PHPStan. It would become tedious, and you might often forget it. That's why it's important to integrate it into your existing code editor or IDE.

PHPStorm

While we could write a guide on how to set up PHPStan in PHPStorm, we don't have to. PHPStorm has a great guide on how to set it up. You can find it here.

But to summarize it, you need to install PHPStan globally, and then you can set it up in PHPStorm:

1. Go to Settings > PHP > Quality Tools > PHPStan
2. Set the path to the PHPStan executable
3. Set the path to the PHPStan configuration file phpstan.neon

And you should be good to go. Once you open a file that has an error inside - you should see it is marked:

That's it, it should work. If you have any issues, you can check the official PHPStorm guide.

What is the Difference Between PHPStan and PHPStorm Inspections

A question that might rise from this, especially given extensive PHPStorm capabilities - what reports will I start to see?

Let's look at a few examples:

Example 1: Passing Mixed Value as a Parameter

Let's take a look at the following line - it's not marked by PHPStorm by default:

But if you install PHPStan, you'll see that it's marked as an error:

Example 2: Defining Return Type

Another quick example is PHPStorm not marking the following code as containing errors:

public function index()
{
    abort_if(Gate::denies('project_access'), Response::HTTP_FORBIDDEN, '403 Forbidden');
 
    $projects = Project::with(['client', 'status'])->get();
 
    return view('admin.projects.index', compact('projects'));
}

Even if it should in have a return type of View. PHPStan will mark it as an error:

Example 3: Relationship Issues

The last obvious example is using relationships in the wrong way. For example, if you try to access a relationship that doesn't exist, PHPStorm won't mark it as an error:

But PHPStan will:

VSCode (Visual Studio Code)

To set it up, you need to install PHPStan globally, and then you can set it up in VSCode:

1. Install PHPStan globally
2. Install the PHPStan extension in VSCode (For example https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=swordev.phpstan)

Of course, there are many more extensions but this seems to be the most downloaded one for now. You can take a look at others too

GitHub Actions

Another way to get informed about potential issues in your code is having a GitHub Action with PHPStan. We'll take the most basic setup for GitHub Actions and add PHPStan to it.

1. Create a new file in your repository called .github/workflows/PHPStan.yml
2. Add the following content:

name: PHPStan inspections
 
on:
  push:
    branches: [ "*" ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ "*" ]
jobs:
  phpstan-inspections:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: shivammathur/setup-php@15c43e89cdef867065b0213be354c2841860869e
      with:
        php-version: '8.1'
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: Copy .env
      run: php -r "file_exists('.env') || copy('.env.example', '.env');"
    - name: Install Dependencies
      run: composer install -q --no-ansi --no-interaction --no-scripts --no-progress --prefer-dist
    - name: Generate key
      run: php artisan key:generate
    - name: Directory Permissions
      run: chmod -R 777 storage bootstrap/cache
    - name: Create Database
      run: |
        mkdir -p database
        touch database/database.sqlite
    - name: Launch PHPStan inspection
      run: vendor/bin/phpstan analyze

And after committing the file to GitHub - it should automatically run PHPStan and you should see the results in the Actions tab:

Once the run is complete - you might see a red cross next to the commit. If you click on it, you should see the details of the run:

Conclusion

And that's it in this course about Larastan, that's all the basics you need to know! But if you have any more questions, ask them in the comments and we may upgrade the lessons in the future with more content and examples.