Type phpmd [filename|directory] [report format] [ruleset file], i.e: :

mapi@arwen ~ $ phpmd PHP/Depend/DbusUI/ xml rulesets/codesize.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<pmd version="0.0.1" timestamp="2009-12-19T22:17:18+01:00">
  <file name="/projects/pdepend/PHP/Depend/DbusUI/ResultPrinter.php">
    <violation beginline="67" 
               endline="224" 
               rule="TooManyMethods" 
               ruleset="Code Size Rules" 
               package="PHP_Depend\DbusUI"
               class="PHP_Depend_DbusUI_ResultPrinter" 
               priority="3">
      This class has too many methods, consider refactoring it.
    </violation>
  </file>
</pmd>

You can pass a file name or a directory name containing PHP source code to PHPMD.

The PHPMD PEAR or Phar distribution includes the rule set files inside its archive, even if the "rulesets/codesize.xml" parameter above looks like a filesystem reference.

• Notice that the default output is in XML, so you can redirect it to a file and XSLT it or whatever

• You can also use shortened names to refer to the built-in rule sets, like this: :

  phpmd PHP/Depend/DbusUI/ xml codesize

• The command line interface also accepts the following optional arguments:
  • --minimumpriority - The rule priority threshold; rules with lower priority than they will not be used.
  • --reportfile - Sends the report output to the specified file, instead of the default output target STDOUT.
  • --suffixes - Comma-separated string of valid source code filename extensions.
  • --exclude - Comma-separated string of patterns that are used to ignore directories.
  • --struct - Also report those nodes with a @SuppressWarnings annotation.

PHPMD uses so called rule sets that configure/define a set of rules which will be applied against the source under test. The default distribution of PHPMD is already shipped with a few default sets, that can be used out-of-box. You can call PHPMD's cli tool with a set's name to apply this configuration: :

~ $ phpmd /path/to/source text codesize

But what if you would like to apply more than one rule set against your source? You can also pass a list of rule set names, separated by comma to PHPMD's cli tool: :

~ $ phpmd /path/to/source text codesize,unusedcode,naming

You can also mix custom rule set files with build-in rule sets: :

~ $ phpmd /path/to/source text codesize,/my/rules.xml

That's it. With this behavior you can specify you own combination of rule sets that will check the source code.

PHPMD also allowes you to specify multiple source directories in case you want to create one output for certain parts of your code :

~ $ phpmd /path/to/code,index.php,/another/place/with/code text codesize

PHPMD's command line tool currently defines three different exit codes.

• 0, This exit code indicates that everything worked as expected. This means there was no error/exception and PHPMD hasn't detected any rule violation in the code under test.
• 1, This exit code indicates that an error/exception occured which has interrupted PHPMD during execution.
• 2, This exit code means that PHPMD has processed the code under test without the occurence of an error/exception, but it has detected rule violations in the analyzed source code.

At the moment PHPMD comes with the following three renderers:

• xml, which formats the report as XML.
• text, simple textual format.
• html, single HTML file with possible problems.