phpcbf.onpaste option

[srikat]

Hi,

It would be nice to have an additional "phpcbf.onpaste" option to automatically format the code when it's pasted into the editor.

[garrettw]

Agreed. What it needs to do is provide a formatter that VS Code recognizes, and then I think it should work automatically, based on the editor.formatOnPaste setting.
Actually it looks like it already does, as I see a setting called phpcbf.documentFormattingProvider. So you may just need to enable editor.formatOnPaste.

[github-actions]

🤖 This is an automated response from Repo Assist.

Good news — you can already get format-on-paste behaviour without any extension-specific setting! Since vscode-phpcbf registers as a Document Formatting Provider for PHP, VS Code's built-in editor.formatOnPaste setting will invoke it automatically whenever you paste into a PHP file.

Add the following to your settings.json:

{
  "editor.formatOnPaste": true,
  "editor.defaultFormatter": "soderlind.phpcbf",
  "[php]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "soderlind.phpcbf"
  }
}

The editor.defaultFormatter (or the language-scoped [php] variant) is required in VS Code 1.61+ to select which formatter to use. Once that's in place, editor.formatOnPaste: true will trigger phpcbf every time you paste PHP code.

Note that VS Code's format-on-paste formats the entire document rather than just the pasted region, since the extension currently only implements DocumentFormattingEditProvider. There is an open PR #40 that adds range/selection formatting — if that gets merged, format-on-paste would then be able to format only the affected lines.

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[github-actions]

🤖 This is an automated response from Repo Assist.

Good news — I've submitted a draft PR that implements the format-on-paste feature!

How it works: The extension now registers a DocumentRangeFormattingEditProvider alongside the existing document formatter. VS Code's editor.formatOnPaste triggers range formatting when you paste, so registering this provider is all that's needed. Since phpcbf always operates on the full document context, the range is ignored and the whole document is fixed (the same behaviour as save-formatting).

To use it (after the PR is merged):

"[php]": {
  "editor.defaultFormatter": "persoderlind.vscode-phpcbf",
  "editor.formatOnPaste": true
}

No new extension config option is required — this uses VS Code's standard editor.formatOnPaste setting.

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[garrettw]

Merging of that PR isn't actually needed because it doesn't really change anything. The recommended config change above will already work.

[github-actions]

🤖 This is an automated response from Repo Assist.

Thanks for the note, @garrettw. I want to clarify the technical picture here, because my earlier comment on this issue (March 9) was misleading and I want to correct it.

Why the PR is still beneficial:

VS Code's editor.formatOnPaste specifically invokes provideDocumentRangeFormattingEdits — not provideDocumentFormattingEdits. Until PR #103, this extension only registered a DocumentFormattingEditProvider. Without a DocumentRangeFormattingEditProvider registered, VS Code has no provider to call on paste events, so format-on-paste silently does nothing for PHP files.

My March 9 comment incorrectly stated it would "work automatically" — that was wrong. Enabling editor.formatOnPaste: true alone is not sufficient without the range provider being registered; VS Code does not fall back to the document formatter for paste events.

Additionally, PR #103 enables "Format Selection":

The ⌘K ⌘F / Ctrl+K Ctrl+F shortcut and the right-click "Format Selection" menu item both require a DocumentRangeFormattingEditProvider. Without it, they remain greyed out for PHP files with this extension — even with editor.defaultFormatter configured correctly.

So while editor.formatOnPaste won't work regardless of the config change without the range provider, PR #103 also unlocks the Format Selection feature, which is a separate user-visible improvement.

I apologise for the confusion caused by my earlier incorrect comment.

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