PHP #region for code folding?

Question

Is there an equivilent of c#\'s #region in PHP?

Answer 1

No, there's nothing directly in the language.

But every decent editors allow some kind of markup to allow this.

For example in Netbeans :

// <editor-fold defaultstate="collapsed" desc="user-description">
  ...any code...
// </editor-fold>

This syntax also works in all the Intellij IDEA editor family, see http://blog.jetbrains.com/webide/2012/03/new-in-4-0-custom-code-folding-regions/

You can also emulate the feature in Eclipse via a plugin : Code folding plugin for Eclipse?

Visual Studio Code includes it since version 1.19 :

#region user description
...any code...
#endregion

Answer 2

You might be able to just use curly brackets {}, but it really depends on your editor.

I know some editors might pick that up as a code block, allowing you to collapse it, but it probably won't allow you to name the section that you're collapsing purely because that function isn't native to the language.

Answer 3

As everybody has said before, the #region in .Net is actually a Visual Studio feature, not a C# one, but the fact that the C# grammar supports the syntax, allows its usage by any IDE that wants to implement it. Since in PHP, the '#' character is also used for comments, the same can be done by the IDEs. In fact, JetBrains' PhpStorm does it: https://blog.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/2012/03/new-in-4-0-custom-code-folding-regions/

Answer 4

In Visual Studio Code, you can "feel at home" with c# style regions like this:

#region Constants
    const ICEBERGS_PER_TITANIC = 100000000;
    const COFFEE_IV_DRIP_RATE = 0.00005;
#endregion

Technically, the region Constants isn't required, all it needs is the # sign. But for c# developers who are used to seeing this (because Visual Studio insists on it being this way), it's not really noisy. And it's actually self-documenting. A PHP maintenance programmer would not by stymied by this.

---

Having said that, these ways also work, but it would be confusing (or just less clear) and might not work in another editor:

#deathstar Constants
    const ICEBERGS_PER_TITANIC = 100000000;
    const COFFEE_IV_DRIP_RATE = 0.00005;
#deathstar

# Constants
    const ICEBERGS_PER_TITANIC = 100000000;
    const COFFEE_IV_DRIP_RATE = 0.00005;
#

Answer 5

PhpStorm supports code folding similar to C#:

#region [comment about what the code does]

code....

#endregion

Answer 6

Now you can use #region on VSCode https://twitter.com/daviwil/status/914925309220106241