--- url: 'https://metadrop.net/en/articles/ensuring-software-quality-static-code-analysers' title: 'Ensuring software quality: Static code analysers' author: 'Jorge Tutor' date: '2017-06-15T10:20:32+00:00' updated: '2026-06-10T07:48:21+00:00' type: article summary: "Static code analysers allow us to audit/measure the state of the project's code in an objective manner." tags: - CI - Jenkins published: true og: determiner: Automatic site_name: Metadrop 'image:alt': 'Ensuring software quality: Static code analysers' street_address: 'Calle Manuel Luna, 12, 3 Dcha' locality: Madrid region: Madrid postal_code: '28020' country_name: España email: hola@metadrop.net phone_number: '910053180' schema: '@context': 'https://schema.org' '@graph': - '@type': Article '@id': 'https://metadrop.net/en/articles/ensuring-software-quality-static-code-analysers#article' name: 'Ensuring software quality: Static code analysers' headline: 'Ensuring software quality: Static code analysers' description: "Static code analysers allow us to audit/measure the state of the project's code in an objective manner." about: - CI - Jenkins datePublished: '2017-06-19T12:20:32+0200' dateModified: '2026-06-10T09:48:21+0200' author: '@type': Person name: 'Jorge Tutor' publisher: '@type': Organization '@id': 'https://metadrop.net/#organization' mainEntityOfPage: 'https://metadrop.net/en/articles/ensuring-software-quality-static-code-analysers' - '@type': Organization '@id': 'https://metadrop.net/#organization' url: 'https://metadrop.net/' name: Metadrop sameAs: - 'https://www.drupal.org/metadrop' - 'https://twitter.com/metadrop' - 'https://asociaciondrupal.es/partner/metadrop' - 'https://www.linkedin.com/company/metadrop' logo: '@type': ImageObject url: 'https://metadrop.net/themes/custom/mdrop_radix/logo-metadrop-500-500.jpg' width: '500' height: '500' - '@type': ItemPage '@id': 'https://metadrop.net/en/articles/ensuring-software-quality-static-code-analysers' breadcrumb: '@type': BreadcrumbList itemListElement: - '@type': ListItem position: 1 name: Home item: 'https://metadrop.net/en' - '@type': ListItem position: 2 name: 'Expert Drupal & Tech Articles' item: 'https://metadrop.net/en/articles' publisher: '@type': Organization '@id': 'https://metadrop.net/#organization' --- 1. [Articles](https://metadrop.net/en/articles) # Ensuring software quality: Static code analysers Monday, June 19, 2017 Static code analysers allow us to audit/measure the state of the project's code in an objective manner. During the development of code (modules, libraries, themes), It's important that we integrate objective tools that measure the state of the code and provide you with information to measure the quality of your code so that you're able to detect and prevent problems derived from low-quality code: duplicated functions, excessively complex methods, developer dependent coding style... Ideally, we must incorporate these tools at the beginning of development but, if it hasn't been done yet, it must be done as soon as possible, write down the initial reports and work towards improving the amount of detected problems. It's recommended to automate these tests in your continuous integration system so they are run every time a new version of your software is uploaded (pull to the repository) so you can keep a record. ## Libraries There are a lot of [tools to improve/audit the quality of the code](https://github.com/exakat/php-static-analysis-tools), from the tool set that we use on a daily basis in Metadrop we can feature: ### PHPCS / Drupal Coder Extension of PHP\_CodeSniffer (phpcs) used to detect code that does not follow Drupal standards in both sintax level and good code practices, and also security errors when building database queries. When all developers use the same coding style, it encourages a more uniform code and makes code revision easier. ### PHPMD PHP extension for detecting different problems such as excessively complex code (cyclomatic complexity) so we can easily detect conflicting parts that can become hotspots for errors and hampering when updating in the near future. ### PHPCPD PHP extention for detecting duplicated code. It's very common to find in projects with very short deadlines code from functions that is not properly abstraced or even algorythms/procedures from indepenent modules that are exactly identical as a result of poor communication between team members. It's elementary to detect this factor and to solve it since it will cause inconsistencies and extra work load when updating/refactoring any component. ### PHPLOC PHP extension used to quickly measure size and analyse the structure of a PHP project. ## Integration with Drupal Integration with Drupal or any other PHP software is easy. In our case, the directory tree is as follows: ```bash docroot/ <- código de drupal build.xml <- fichero integración phing logs_codereview/.. <- resultados de tests ... ``` Meaning, we have the project's directory with a *docroot* directory containing Drupal's code, a build.xml file with settings for integration with phing, and a *logs\_codereview* directory where the analisys' results are placed. ### PHING For automating these processes we use PHING, if you know ANT, it's the same concept but for PHP. [Phing](https://www.phing.info/) is a tool for building or compiling projects and is based on Apache Ant. It can do anything that's possible with a traditional compiling system like GNU make and its use of simple compilation XML files and PHP "task" extendable classes makes it so it's a highly flexible and easy to use compilation framework. You can view a list of all the tools integrated with Phing on and remember that you can alway extend Phing or run a certain command with <exec> so you will always be free to do as you like. Installing libraries on PHING Phing can be easily installed with Composer: ```bash # We create directoty, in OPT for example: mkdir /opt/phing && cd /opt/phing # We install libraries (composer): composer require phing/phing composer require drupal/coder composer require sebastian/phpcpd composer require phpmd/phpmd composer require pdepend/pdepend composer require phploc/phploc composer require phpunit/phpunit composer require phpunit/php-code-coverage # Symlink in /usr/bin ln -s /opt/phing/vendor/bin/phing /usr/local/bin/phing # We check version: phing -version # We add Drupal coding standard to phpcs: phpcs --config-set installed_paths /opt/phing/vendor/drupal/coder/coder_sniffer ``` #### Build XML In the *build.xml* file we define which files will be processed, in this case, they're all inside the *docroot* directory (having *build.xml* in the parent directory) and all the processes (targets) that will be executed. ```xml ``` #### PHING Execution When executing Phing, we indicate the *build.xml* and the targets that we want to execute. ```bash phing -f build.xml phpcs phpmc phpcpc phploc ``` #### Phing output In our example, we have dumped the output in the *logs\_codereview/* directory which will be later analyzed by the continuous integration system, Jenkins in our case. ```bash $ ls -l logs_codereview/ checkstyle-result.xml cpd.xml loc.txt pmd.xml ``` ## Conclusions Thanks to Phing, integrating different static code analysis tools is a simple, easy to implement and highly recommended task so we can take one more step towards ensuring quality in the code. Do you know of any other tools? Share them in the comments below! [CI](https://metadrop.net/en/articles?text=CI) [Jenkins](https://metadrop.net/en/articles?text=Jenkins) - Jorge Tutor CIO [Quality Assurance](https://metadrop.net/en/methodology/quality-assurance " See Quality Assurance") Metadrop enforces quality through CI/CD pipelines, automated testing (Behat, PHPUnit), static code analysis, and peer review on every project. See more