When building web applications, especially with PHP, there are some tools that are invaluable.

These include things like a good IDE, a powerful debugger, version control, and so on. But one of the things that I think we often neglect against our shiny tools are basic text files.

No, I don’t think we need to take a step back from our usual toolset, let’s not forget files also at our disposal.

Case in point: Let’s say you’re working on a web application. If you’re using PHP, then one way to do this is to view the PHP debug log.

It’s a simple text file that gives you as much information as you could want about any page in your project. Continue reading

A little over a month ago, I talked about how to install the PHP Code Sniffer in an MAMP-based environment. Though you can read the post in its entirety, the short of is this:

1. Setup Pear
2. Install the package via Pear
3. Grab the rules for the WordPress Coding Standards
4. Begin evaluating your code

Easy enough, right?

But here’s the thing: As mentioned in the article, some may opt to use Composer to install the package. In fact, someone also mentioned this in the comments.

And since Composer is the default dependency management application for PHP projects, it makes sense to use it, right?

The funny thing is, since I’ve written that article, I’ve been using Composer in a few projects. So I thought it would make sense to show how to install PHP CodeSniffer with Composer.

Continue reading