New in Symplify 9: Skipper - Skipping Files and Rules made Simple

• 3 min
• Thu, Dec 10, 2020
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• Found a typo? Edit me

When I started writing this post, I remembered a TV series from my childhood about the hero kangaroo:

It's like Batman, just kangaroo. Anyone? :) Ok, I'm old. Back to the software skipper.

"How Can I Skip the ...?"

This is one of the most common questions in Rector or ECS issues. Skip feature is native to most of CLI tools:

• PHPStan has ignoreErrors and excludes_analyse parameter
• PHP_CodeSniffer has command line and annotation support
• PHP CS Fixer is thinking about it since 2017

Most packages have at least 2 ways to skip a file or rule:

• exclude_files
• excludedFiles
• skip
• ignored
• ignorePaths
• ignoreDirectories
• notAllowedPaths
• ...

It makes sense to have each information separated for the package developer. Then they know if you want to skip a path or a rule. But it's absolute hell for the user of the package.

• It's a common case, we need to ignore one file in all our CLI tools.
• For each package, we have to learn new syntax.
• Typos, hard to remember, you skip a class in paths parameters...

We've all been there.

Complexity opens Space for Bugs

These complicated configuration options also allows to have duplicated skip. Try debugging this:

use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Loader\Configurator\ContainerConfigurator;
use Symplify\Skipper\ValueObject\Option;

return static function (ContainerConfigurator $containerConfigurator): void {
    $parameters = $containerConfigurator->parameters();

    $parameters->set(Option::SKIP, [
        SomeSniff::class => [
            __DIR__ . '/some-path',
        ]
    ]);

    $parameters->set(Option::EXCLUDE_RULES, [SomeSniff::class]);
};

Why is the SomeSniff skipped in __DIR__ . '/another-path' too? It shouldn't be, only __DIR__ . '/some-path'.

KISS: The SKIP Parameter

Why not take users priority and make it simple for them? Let's use Occam's razor and provide intuitive choice:

Single skip parameter:

use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Loader\Configurator\ContainerConfigurator;
use Symplify\Skipper\ValueObject\Option;

return static function (ContainerConfigurator $containerConfigurator): void {
    $parameters = $containerConfigurator->parameters();

    $parameters->set(Option::SKIP, [
        // absolute directory
        __DIR__ . '/some-path',

        // absolute file
        __DIR__ . '/some-path/some-file.php',

        // with mask
        '*/Fixture/*',

        // specific class
        SomeClass::class,

        // specific class specific path
        NarrowedClass::class => [__DIR__ . '/src/OnlyHere'],

        // class code in paths
        AnotherSniff::class . '.SomeCode' => ['*Sniff.php', '*YamlFileLoader.php'],
    ]);
};

That's it!

That's the main principle of Skipper. Rector 0.9 and ECS 9 build on Skipper, so be sure to use its syntax in ecs.php and rector.php. Instead of many skip/exclude_paths/exclude_rules params, there is just skip now.

How to Upgrade from Symplify 8 to 9 and Rector 0.8 to 0.9

Just to be sure, this is how you upgrade your ecs.php and rector.php configs:

-$parameters->set(Option::EXCLUDE_PATHS, [
+$parameters->set(Option::SKIP, [
     // paths to skip
     '*/Fixture/*',
     __DIR__ . '/packages/easy-hydrator/tests/Fixture',
-]);
-$parameters->set(Option::SKIP, [
-     ArrayDeclarationSniff::class => null,
+     ArrayDeclarationSniff::class,
 ]);

After renaming of EXCLUDE_PATHS to SKIP, make sure there is just one SKIP option in your config. Symfony would pick just one of them without telling you.

Happy coding!