When reviewing PHP code, a PHP developer should check for various aspects to ensure that the code is well-structured, efficient, secure, and adheres to best practices. Here's an instruction checklist for a PHP developer during a code review.
- Self-Review: Check your code yourself before review.
- Coding Standards: Follow Coding Standards and Best Practices to save reviewer time.
- Feedback as Recommendations: Feedback should be presented as recommendations, not commands to implement.
- Improve Code: The goal is to make the code better, not to find someone to blame.
- Collective Responsibility: All developers participate in the review. This increases the level of involvement in the project.
- Mandatory Reviews: Code reviews are carried out for each team member without exception.
- Understand the Task: Understand what needs to be done in the task being reviewed.
- Branch Check: Switch to the branch in which the development was carried out.
- Code Consistency: Ensure that the code adheres to the organization's coding standards and style guide.
- Naming Conventions: Check that variables, functions, and classes have meaningful and consistent names.
- Code Indentation: Verify that the code is correctly indented and formatted for readability.
- Use of Comments: Ensure that the code is adequately documented with clear comments for complex logic or non-obvious decisions.
- Remove Unused Code: Ensure that the code does not have unused code or unnecessary comments.
- Functionality: Verify that the code implements the required functionality correctly and efficiently.
- Edge Cases: Check for handling of edge cases, boundary conditions, and exceptional scenarios.
- Code Duplication: Identify and eliminate duplicated code. Encourage code reusability.
- Complexity: Can the code be made simpler?
- Input Validation: Ensure that user inputs are properly validated and sanitized to prevent security vulnerabilities like SQL injection and XSS attacks.
- Authentication and Authorization: Check that access controls are correctly implemented to prevent unauthorized access.
- Secure File Handling: Verify that file handling operations are secure to prevent file inclusion vulnerabilities.
- Database Queries: Check the efficiency of database queries and recommend optimizations where necessary.
- Resource Usage: Verify that the code does not consume excessive server resources or memory.
- Caching: Recommend the use of caching mechanisms for performance improvement when applicable.
- Exception Handling: Check that exceptions are handled gracefully and that error messages do not reveal sensitive information.
- Logging: Ensure that relevant information is logged for troubleshooting and debugging.
- Unit Tests: Verify that the code has appropriate unit tests for the added/modified functionality.
- Test Coverage: Check that the unit tests provide good coverage for the code.
- Postman: Execute all Postman collection tests and add/modify existing tests.
- Inline Comments: Ensure the code is documented with inline comments for clarity.
- Function/Method Descriptions: Check that functions and methods are documented with clear descriptions.
- API Documentation: Ensure that APIs and public interfaces are well-documented for other developers.
- Commits and Messages: Verify that commits are clear and concise, with meaningful commit messages.
- Branching Strategy: Check that the code follows the organization's branching strategy.
- Integration: Verify that the code integrates seamlessly with other components and services (only if it is high-quality and clean code).
- Deployment Process: Check that the code is ready for deployment and follows the deployment process.