Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 5 - Comment a code block

In the part 5 of this series, I am going to explain how to Comment/Uncomment a code block in VIM editor.

Method 1

Add folowing lines in your ~/.vimrc file

func! PhpUnComment() range
    let l:paste = &g:paste
    let &g:paste = 0

    let l:line        = a:firstline
    let l:endline     = a:lastline

    while l:line <= l:endline
        if getline (l:line) =~ '^\s*\/\/.*$'
            let l:newline = substitute (getline (l:line), '^\(\s*\)\/\/ \(.*\).*$', '\1\2', '')
        else
            let l:newline = substitute (getline (l:line), '^\(\s*\)\(.*\)$', '\1// \2', '')
        endif
        call setline (l:line, l:newline)
        let l:line = l:line + 1
    endwhile

    let &g:paste = l:paste
endfunc

vnoremap <buffer> <C-c> :call PhpUnComment()<CR>

Now In visual mode select the lines to comment/uncomment and press <CTRL-c>. This will comment all the uncommented lines, and uncomment all the commented lines.


Method 2

Using blockwise visual mode (CTRL-V) select the block to be commented.
Press I (capital i) and write the text you want to prepend to each line of the selected block (e.g. // or #). Then press ESC and the text will be inserted to the left of each line of the selected block.


For other posts related to VIM settings and plugins you can also visit

Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 1 - General settings
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 2 - Autocompletion
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 3 - PHP documentor
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 4 - CodeSniffer Integration

Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 4 - CodeSniffer Integration

In this part 4 of this series, I am going to discuss CodeSniffer and its integration with VIM editor.

What is CodeSniffer

CodeSniffer is a code analysis tool. This tool allows you to check your php code against a coding standard. It allows you to apply a set of rules (standard) to your source code. These rules can be used to detect common programming errors. It can also be used to define a set of coding standards for your project.

A coding standard in CodeSniffer is a collection of sniff files. Each sniff file checks one part of the coding standard only. CodeSniffer comes with a set of coding standards already defined. These are:

• MySource
• PEAR
• PHPCS
• Squiz
• Zend

The default coding standard used by CodeSniffer is the PEAR coding standard. By integrating CodeSniffer into vim you can get the list of violations in a separate error window.

How to install CodeSniffer

You can install CodeSniffer using pear.

$ sudo pear install PHP_CodeSniffer

This will download and install the CodeSniffer from the PEAR repository.

How to run CodeSniffer

To run CodeSniffer execute

$ phpcs --standard=<standard> <path to file or directory>

The output will be a list of errors and warnings in your code as per your coding standard. 

CodeSniffer Integration with VIM editor

Add folowing lines in your ~/.vimrc file

function! RunPhpcs()
    let l:filename=@%
    let l:phpcs_output=system('phpcs --report=full --standard=PEAR '.l:filename)
    let l:phpcs_list=split(l:phpcs_output, "\n")
    unlet l:phpcs_list[0]
    cexpr l:phpcs_list
    cwindow
endfunction

set errorformat+=\"%f\"\\,%l\\,%c\\,%t%*[a-zA-Z]\\,\"%m\"
command! Phpcs execute RunPhpcs()

Now you can run CodeSniffer for the current file using command

:Phpcs

After that run

:cope

This will open a window with a list of all the errors and warnings in your code as per your coding standard. Alternatively you can use quickfix also to navigate through the error window. For that see help quickfix in the vim help.


For other posts related to VIM settings and plugins you can also visit

Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 1 - General settings
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 2 - Autocompletion
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 3 - PHP documentor
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 5 - Comment a code block

Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 3 - PHP documentor

In the part 1 and part 2 I talked about some useful vim settings and how to enable autocompletion in vim. In this part I am going to talk about a very useful plugin written by Tobias Schlitt, for generating comment blocks or docblocks for php scripts.

We do document our code with proper inline comments. To make this task easier, Tobias Schlitt wrote a VIM plugin which automatically lookup some characteristics of the item you want to document and creates a docblock skeleton for it. This plugin provides functions to generate documentation blocks for your PHP code. The script currently documents:

- Classes
- Methods/Functions
- Attributes

This plugin supports PHP 4 and 5 syntax elements. It also allows you to define default values for phpDocumentor tags like @version, @author, @license and so on. For function/method parameters and attributes, the script tries to guess the type as good as possible from PHP5 type hints or default values (array, bool, int, string etc).

Steps to install this plugin

• Download the plugin file (php-doc.vim) from here.
• After downloading just place the php-doc.vim file in ~/.vim/plugin/ folder
• Add folowing lines in your ~/.vimrc file

        source ~/.vim/plugin/php-doc.vim
        inoremap <c-p> <esc>:call PhpDocSingle()<cr>i
        nnoremap <c-p> :call PhpDocSingle()<cr>
        vnoremap <c-p> :call PhpDocRange()<cr>

This includes the script and maps the combination <ctrl> + p to the doc functions.

How to use

Just hit <ctrl>+p on the line where the element to document resides and the doc block will be created directly above that line.

For other posts related to VIM settings and plugins you can also visit

Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 1 - General settings
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 2 - Autocompletion
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 4 - CodeSniffer Integration
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 5 - Comment a code block

Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 2 - Autocompletion

In the first part I talked about some useful settings, In this part I am going to explain how to use Autocompletion with VI editor.

To set autocompletion on, add the following settings in .vimrc file in your home directory or alternatively you can add them to /etc/vim/vimrc file, that will enable these settings for all users on the system.

   
set ofu=syntaxcomplete

Vim has autocomplete functionality for all common web development contexts. Now, If you are editing a file in vim which ends with .php, .html, .css, .js, .sql, .rb, or .py. Vim's "omnifunc" feature combined with its built-in autocomplete feature will show autocomplete options specific to the corresponding language. You can type a few words/chars and can press (in insert mode) following commands to autocomplete words from different context, vim shows a box below the cursor containing the options, with the first entry highlighted:

CTRL-X_CTRL-O - To search matching words in coding language manual
CTRL-X_CTRL-L - To search matching words in whole lines
CTRL-X_CTRL-N - To search matching words in the current file
CTRL-X_CTRL-K - To search matching words in dictionary
CTRL-X_CTRL-I - To search matching words in the current and included files
CTRL-X_CTRL-F - To search matching words in file names
CTRL-X_CTRL-] - To search matching words in tags
CTRL-N        - To search matching words in all of above

Autocompletion using the TAB key

Using above commands are little difficult. For easy use we can remap them to TAB key. Add the following function to your vimrc file. This function determines, wether we are on the start of the line text (then tab indents) or if we want to try autocompletion

func! InsertTabWrapper()
    let col = col('.') - 1
    if !col || getline('.')[col - 1] !~ '\k'
        return "\<tab>"
    else
        return "\<c-p>"
    endif
endfunction

Remap the TAB key to select action with InsertTabWrapper, add the following line in vimrc file

inoremap <buffer> <tab> <c-r>=InsertTabWrapper()<cr>

Now, when you will press a TAB key, it will check wheather you are on the start of a line, if yes it will indent your code, otherwise it will try to show you autocompletion window.

For other posts related to VIM settings and plugins you can also visit

Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 1 - General settings
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 3 - PHP documentor
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 4 - CodeSniffer Integration
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 5 - Comment a code block

Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 1 - General settings

Here are some useful settings, commands and plugins to make VI editor more developer friendy (some settings are there only for PHP users).

You need to add the following settings in .vimrc file in your home directory or alternatively you can add them to /etc/vim/vimrc file, that will enable these settings for all users on the system.

"For highlighting the code add
 syntax on

"Show a ruler at the bottom of screen
  set ruler
  set laststatus=2

"Show matching brackets.
  set showmatch

"To do a case insesnitive search.
  set ignorecase

"To replace TAB with shift of 4 spaces.
  set tabstop=4
  set shiftwidth=4
  set expandtab

"Show line numbers.
 set number

"Jump 5 lines when running out of the screen
 set scrolljump=5

"Indicate jump out of the screen when 3 lines before end of the screen
 set scrolloff=3

"Set indentation rules
 setlocal autoindent
 setlocal smartindent

"Correct indentation after opening a docblock and automatic * on every line
  setlocal formatoptions=qroct

"Append ending brackets whenever open a bracket
 inoremap [ []
 inoremap ( ( )

"Spell Checking
 set spell spelllang=en_us
 Now use can move to next or previous misspelled word using ]s and [s commands, also you can use following
 zg   Add word under cursor as good word
 z=   Suggest corrections for the word under cursor

For other posts related to VIM settings and plugins you can also visit

Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 2 - Autocompletion
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 3 - PHP documentor
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 4 - CodeSniffer Integration
Some useful settings and plugins for VI Editor : Part 5 - Comment a code block