The Squizlabs blog has an announcement about the release of the latest major version of the popular PHP_CodeSniffer tool for PHP - CodeSniffer v2.0. Among the updates in this latest release is a major one - the automated fixing of issues the tool finds.

Nineteen months ago, I started work on a project to allow PHP_CodeSniffer to fix the problems that it finds. Doing this required a lot of changes to the core classes, a lot of iteration and refactoring of the fixing and testing code, and an enormous amount of time and testing across many PHP projects to ensure I am confident enough to release something that actually modifies code. I could keep writing unit tests forever, but I've finally got to a point where I am happy to release this first version of the PHP Code Beautifier and Fixer (PHPCBF), for when you just can't be bothered fixing coding standard errors yourself.

The fixes are made possible through the newly introduced "PHP Code Beautifier and Fixer" (PHPCBF) tool. When the CodeSniffer tool is run against your code the PHPCBF kicks in too and tells you which of the issues can be automatically fixed. Additionally, you can now add custom code to your custom sniffer rules to enable this auto-fix functionality yourself. He also includes a list of the other updates in the release including:

• a new information report to show you how your code is written rather than if it conforms to a standard
• the ability to set command line arguments in ruleset.xml files
• the ability to create your own custom reporting classes and use them with PHP_CodeSniffer
• support for running on HHVM

You can find out more information about this release in the PEAR or GitHub changelogs.