PHP

Setting up VS Code

Install PHP and XDebug

First install the software. This was done in the WSL

sudo apt install -y php8.5 php8.5-cli php8.5-common php8.5-mbstring php8.5-xml php8.5-curl php8.5-mysql
sudo apt install php-xdebug

Check your php now has Debug. You should see Xdebug listed

php -v

Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Built by Debian
Zend Engine v4.5.3, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
    with Xdebug v3.5.0, Copyright (c) 2002-2025, by Derick Rethans
    with Zend OPcache v8.5.3, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

Change Your Xdebug.ini

Find you wsl ip with

hostname -I

172.28.58.213

Find your xdebug.ini

php -i | grep 'xdebug.ini'

/etc/php/8.5/cli/conf.d/20-xdebug.ini,

Now amend your xdebug.ini to have this and remember to use your ip

zend_extension=xdebug.so

xdebug.mode = develop,debug
#xdebug.start_with_request = trigger
xdebug.start_with_request = yes
xdebug.client_port = 9003

xdebug.client_host = 172.28.58.213

Set up VS Code

Install extension Php Debug by Xdebug and create a launch.json

{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "Listen for Xdebug",
      "type": "php",
      "request": "launch",
      "port": 9003
    }
  ]
}

Note the robot wanted me to put this in the launch.json file and it stopped it working

"pathMappings": {
  "/": "${workspaceFolder}"
}

Running in VS Code

For me I simply pressed F5 to run the launch.json and ran the code with

php -S localhost:1701

You need to go to you browser and access you php application. Mine starts with index.php to http://localhost:1701. You must press F5 before starting code because the code needs to find the debugger when starting. For me I saw this when working

[Thu Mar 12 13:29:40 2026] PHP 8.5.3 Development Server (http://localhost:1701) started
[Thu Mar 12 13:29:47 2026] 127.0.0.1:37794 Accepted
[Thu Mar 12 13:29:47 2026] 127.0.0.1:37794 [200]: GET /
[Thu Mar 12 13:29:47 2026] 127.0.0.1:37794 Closing
[Thu Mar 12 13:29:47 2026] 127.0.0.1:37808 Accepted

And this when failed

[Thu Mar 12 13:26:38 2026] PHP 8.5.3 Development Server (http://localhost:1701) started
[Thu Mar 12 13:26:51 2026] 127.0.0.1:39096 Accepted
[Thu Mar 12 13:26:51 2026] Xdebug: [Step Debug] Could not connect to debugging client. Tried: 172.28.58.213:9003 (through xdebug.client_host/xdebug.client_port).
[Thu Mar 12 13:26:51 2026] 127.0.0.1:39096 [200]: GET /
[Thu Mar 12 13:26:51 2026] 127.0.0.1:39096 Closing
[Thu Mar 12 13:26:51 2026] 127.0.0.1:39106 Accepted

Other Stuff I installed

We need to install

sudo apt install php-cli composer php-xml

You will need to set up php-cs-fixer first. Extensions suggested are

• PHP Intelephense
• PHP Getters & Setters
• PHP debug
• PHP CS Fixer
• Twig Language 2
• SQLTools

Creating Project With Composer

To create a project you need to run the following. The only tricky bit is the name where they want vendor/name e.g. bibble/test

composer init

Revisit 2026

Introduction

So not been serious about PHP ever. Done some with eServ, the PMI webpage, Wifey's wordpress and some work in Matakina but in general, did what I needed to do and got out as fast as possible.

Composer

This as the first time I have used composer knowingly. This appears to be like npm and looking at the example below we can see

• Dependencies
• Scripts
• Project Properties

{
    "name": "bibble/wp-bibble-calendar",
    "description": "A modular PHP calendar project",
    "require": {
        "php": "^8.1"
    },
    "require-dev": {
        "captainhook/captainhook": "^5.28",
        "friendsofphp/php-cs-fixer": "^3.94",
        "phpstan/phpstan": "^2.1",
        "squizlabs/php_codesniffer": "^4.0",
        "symplify/phpstan-rules": "^14.9"
    },
    "autoload": {
        "psr-4": {
            "Core\\": "src/Core/",
            "Components\\": "src/Components/",
            "App\\": "src/App/"
        }
    },
    "scripts": {
        "phpstan": "phpstan analyse",
        "php-cs": "php-cs-fixer fix --allow-risky=yes --sequential",
        "php-cs-check": "php-cs-fixer fix --dry-run --diff --sequential",
        "lint": "phpcs --colors --standard=phpcs.xml src index.php",
        "lint-fix": "phpcbf --standard=phpcs.xml src index.php"
    }
}

Below is more on autoload

Autoload

In the old days I use to do this which is now probably a very very old approach.

require_once __DIR__ . '/../../../constants/days.php';

The autoload section works out what is required and autoloads it. In my case I have the directories under the src directories. You need to initialize and refresh this by running

composer dump-autoload

There are rules around it but none I will remember. I think basically if you change composer.json.

Scripts

So you can see I use scripts these are much the same as npm. The real part is on the right

• phpstan - Is a static analysis tool.
• php-cs - Checks code for violations
• phpcbf - Fixes issues php-cs reports

I set these up in https://git.bibble.co.nz/bibble235/wp-bibble-calendar hopefully using best practice. Like most of these tools, it probably helps to know what good looks like.

Captainhook

This is a tool to enable running of the above scripts prior to checking in. Found it a pain to set up but that is the thing with stuff you know nothing about and an out of day robot. Had to read stuff.

Namespaces

So like C# we have namespace and I have taken the same approach. So Core/Domain/Constants/Days.php has the following

<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

namespace Core\Domain\Constants;

class Days
{
....
}

Using it is almost the same as c# with some exceptions

<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

namespace Components\Pages\MonthView;

use Core\Domain\Constants\Days;

class DayCell
{
...
        $weekdayLabel = ($rowIndex === 0)
            ? '<div class=\'month-view-header-month\'>' . Days::SHORT[$weekday] . '</div>'
            : '';
...
}

So here is a summary table of what can be autoloaded

Thing	Autoloaded?	Why
Class	Yes	PSR-4 maps class names directly to file paths.
Interface	Yes	Same PSR-4 class mapping rules apply.
Trait	Yes	Loaded through the same class-based autoload mechanism.
Enum	Yes	Treated like classes and resolved via PSR-4.
Class constant	Yes	Loaded when the class is autoloaded.
File-level constant	No	No mapping exists between constant names and files.
Function	No	Functions cannot be resolved via PSR-4; no name→file mapping.
Global variable	No	Not part of the autoloading system.

The things that do not autoload you need to find another approach which I will not go into detail here but an example of loading a function might be declare a use statement (note it needs function after use

<?php
declare(strict_types=1);

use function \blah\utils\foo;

Then manually add it to the compose psr-4 section.

"autoload": {
    "psr-4": {
        "blah\\": "src/blah/"
    },
    "files": [
        "src/blah/utils/functions.php"
    ]
}