Cognitive Complexity

Cognitive Complexity is a measure of how difficult a unit of code is to intuitively understand. Unlike Cyclomatic Complexity, which determines how difficult your code will be to test, Cognitive Complexity tells you how difficult your code will be to read and comprehend.

A method's cognitive complexity is based on a few simple rules:

• Code is not considered more complex when it uses shorthand that the language provides for collapsing multiple statements into one
• Code is considered more complex for each "break in the linear flow of the code"
• Code is considered more complex when "flow breaking structures are nested"

Further reading

• Cognitive Complexity docs
• Cognitive Complexity: A new way of measuring understandability

MissingImport

Since: 2.7.0

Importing all external classes in a file through use statements makes them clearly visible.

Example

function make() {
    return new \stdClass();
}

Source http://phpmd.org/rules/cleancode.html#MissingImport

MissingImport

Since: 2.7.0

Importing all external classes in a file through use statements makes them clearly visible.

Example

function make() {
    return new \stdClass();
}

Source http://phpmd.org/rules/cleancode.html#MissingImport

MissingImport

Since: 2.7.0

Importing all external classes in a file through use statements makes them clearly visible.

Example

function make() {
    return new \stdClass();
}

Source http://phpmd.org/rules/cleancode.html#MissingImport

MissingImport

Since: 2.7.0

Importing all external classes in a file through use statements makes them clearly visible.

Example

function make() {
    return new \stdClass();
}

Source http://phpmd.org/rules/cleancode.html#MissingImport

StaticAccess

Since: 1.4.0

Static access causes unexchangeable dependencies to other classes and leads to hard to test code. Avoid using static access at all costs and instead inject dependencies through the constructor. The only case when static access is acceptable is when used for factory methods.

Example

class Foo
{
    public function bar()
    {
        Bar::baz();
    }
}

Source https://phpmd.org/rules/cleancode.html#staticaccess

If you throw a general exception type, such as ErrorException, RuntimeException, or Exception in a library or framework, it forces consumers to catch all exceptions, including unknown exceptions that they do not know how to handle.

Instead, either throw a subtype that already exists in the Standard PHP Library, or create your own type that derives from Exception.

Noncompliant Code Example

throw new Exception();  // Noncompliant

Compliant Solution

throw new InvalidArgumentException();
// or
throw new UnexpectedValueException();

See

• MITRE, CWE-397 - Declaration of Throws for Generic Exception
• CERT, ERR07-J. - Do not throw RuntimeException, Exception, or Throwable

UnusedLocalVariable

Since: 0.2

Detects when a local variable is declared and/or assigned, but not used.

Example

class Foo {
    public function doSomething()
    {
        $i = 5; // Unused
    }
}

Source https://phpmd.org/rules/unusedcode.html#unusedlocalvariable