Setting up VSCode

VSCode is a an Integrated Development Environment from Microsoft available under the MIT License. It works on Linux/Windows/OSX. It has a large number of plugins available, most entirely free/libre. It has good support for Xdebug.

Debugging

PHP Debug adds debugging capability for PHP files, which is essential. Follow the extension's installation instructions.

It allows the setting of breakpoints where the contents of variables can be inspected. Breakpoints can be conditional, e.g. break execution of a loop when a variable reaches a certain value.

Intellisense

PHP Intelephense is the standard php plugin for intellisense features.

Linting

Linting plugins will show wavy red lines under code that does not conform:

The linters used for development are:

stylelint for CSS
ESLint for JS
PHP Sniffer for PHP. It requires phpcs v3.* (package) installed and configured to use moodle's standards.

PHP CS

Install PHP CS following steps described in https://docs.moodle.org/dev/CodeSniffer#Installing_PHP_CS (you may choose your favourite way to install and configure it).

Code Formatting

If you have PHP Sniffer installed, configure it to be the default formatter:

// add this [php] key/value pair in vscode's user settings (settings.json): {

 // ...
 "[php]": {
   "editor.defaultFormatter": "wongjn.php-sniffer"
 }

}

Besides, you can add the following setting too in order to define standard PHP CS:

"phpSniffer.standard": "moodle",

Behat/Gherkin/Cucumber Formatting

This plugin offers colour syntax formatting for behat .feature files. I have not found a plugin that will format .feature files consistent with the expected indentations

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Blodwynn.featurehighlight

Automated testing

Yet Another PHPUnit lets you run automated tests from within vscode.

It inserts a link just above the class name that says 'Run class tests' which will run all the tests in a class and links above each function that says Run test that will run just that test.

Docblocks

PHP DocBlocker to create a docblock by typing /** at the top of a function and it grabs the parameters, including types if given and creates a PHPDoc block.

Moodle specific Snippets and autocomplete

Moodle - Snippets & Autocomplete offers some useful Moodle specific code completion popups.

Auto trim trailing white space

To ensure trailing white space is trimmed do the following

Open VS User Settings (Preferences > Settings > User Settings tab). Click the {} icon in the top-right part of the window. This will open a document.

Add a new "files.trimTrailingWhitespace": true setting to the User Settings document if it's not already there. This is so you aren't editing the Default Setting directly, but instead adding to it.

Save the User Settings file.

Documentation