Introduction

Since we are looking into the foundations of working in a team, which also includes defining a set of rules for formatting files.

In the previous article, we discussed Fixing the styling and formatting of PHP files using Github Actions and Laravel Pint, so check that out if you haven’t yet.

In this article, we will be looking at formatting blade files with the help of blade-formatter and Github Actions.

Prerequisites

We first need to install blade-formatter, which is a node package. They also provide a VS Code Extension, but we’ll be working with a package since we will be formatting the files using command-line and Github Action.

So, let’s start by installing the package first:

npm install --save-dev blade-formatter

Defining the Workflow

Once we’ve installed the package, the next thing is to define the workflow. So, let’s take a look at the workflow and I’ll explain each section as we go along:

// .github/format_blade.yml
name: Fix Code Style

on:
  pull_request:
    branches: [develop]

jobs:
  format-blade:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Install NPM dependencies
        run: npm ci

      - name: Run Blade Formatter
        run: node_modules/.bin/blade-formatter --write resources/**/*.blade.php

      - name: Commit changes
        uses: stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action@v4
        with:
          commit_message: Apply Blade Formatter Changes
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.PERSONAL_TOKEN }}

The first thing to note about this file is that it should be placed inside the .github folder of the root directory with an extension of .yml, otherwise it won’t work. In this case, we are creating a file called format_blade.yml inside the .github folder.

// .github/format_blade.yml

name: Fix Code Style

on:
  pull_request:
    branches: [dev]

And once again, I suggest you read this article where we discuss in detail the general structure of these .yml files and also check the repository of blade-formatter to get the idea about formatting blade files from the command line. So, similar to the previous workflow, we will be formatting the blade files whenever there is a Pull Request to the dev branch

jobs:
  format-blade:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

Here, the name of the job is format-blade which runs on the latest version of Ubuntu, and the Checkout code task basically clones our repository to the ubuntu system.

      - name: Install NPM dependencies
        run: npm ci

The next step is to install the node packages since we’ve only cloned the repo on our previous step, and in this step, we install the node packages by running npm ci

      - name: Run Blade Formatter
        run: node_modules/.bin/blade-formatter --write resources/**/*.blade.php

And then, we will be running the  .node_modules/.bin/blade-formatter --write resources/**/*.blade.php command which will recursively format all of the blade files inside the resources folder and also save the changes.

      - name: Commit changes
        uses: stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action@v4
        with:
          commit_message: Apply Blade Formatter Changes
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.PERSONAL_TOKEN }}

And finally, as discussed here, we will be using the stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action to commit the changes to our repository using the PERSONAL_TOKEN and hence in this way, all the changes made by the formatter will be committed automatically to our existing Pull Request.

Reference Links

• Blade Formatter Github Repo
• Fix styling and formatting of PHP files using Github Actions and Laravel Pint
• Github Action Documentation