Code Style formatting with Github Actions

First published on May 2, 2020 · Last updated on May 10, 2020

Yesterday I dived into Prettier and PHP CS Fixer for my projects. So I decided to write a quick blog post on the subject. I managed to get a great quick start by reading these two excellent blog posts by Freek Van der Herten and Stefan Zweifer on the subject:

In the end, I decided to combine the two in a single workflow but in two jobs:

name: Code Style

on: [push]

jobs:
  php-cs-fixer:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Run PHP CS Fixer
        uses: docker://oskarstark/php-cs-fixer-ga
        with:
          args: --config=.php_cs.dist --allow-risky=yes

      - name: Commit changes
        uses: stefanzweifel/[email protected]
        with:
          commit_message: Fix styling
          branch: ${{ github.head_ref }}
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

  prettier:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Install NPM dependencies
        run: npm ci

      - name: Run Prettier
        run: npm run format

      - name: Commit changes
        uses: stefanzweifel/[email protected]
        with:
          commit_message: Apply Prettier changes
          branch: ${{ github.head_ref }}
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

The benefit of this is that your Github Actions will be neatly grouped in Pull Requests and the Github Actions overview:

Github Actions

Also, we only run them on push so any code that gets merged with incorrect styling will be automatically fixed. Here's the full Pull Request for Laravel.io where we added the workflow and set up Prettier and PHP CS Fixer: https://github.com/laravelio/laravel.io/pull/520

About me

I'm a software engineer from Belgium. I work as one of the core team members of Laravel, the popular PHP framework.

I'm also the creator of Eventy, a platform that connects the dots between user groups, speakers, conferences and attendees.

My passions are open-source, growing communities, and building products that people love.