Indent PHP Code

How the indentation is calculated

The tool keeps a depth counter. Each opening brace adds one level and each closing brace removes one. Every line is padded with the chosen number of spaces multiplied by the current depth. The indent is always spaces, never tabs.

Here is the same function with each setting. The input was function total($items){$sum=0;foreach($items as $item){$sum+=$item["price"];}return $sum;}.

With 4 spaces:

function total($items)
{
    $sum=0;
    foreach($items as $item)
    {
        $sum+=$item["price"];
    }
    return $sum;
}

With 2 spaces:

function total($items)
{
  $sum=0;
  foreach($items as $item)
  {
    $sum+=$item["price"];
  }
  return $sum;
}

2 spaces or 4 spaces

Four spaces is the usual convention in PHP projects, and the one most style guides ask for. Two spaces keeps deeply nested code narrower, which helps when you paste into a small ticket field or a chat message. Match whatever your team uses.

Things to know

• Tabs in your input are not preserved, since whitespace around braces and semicolons is rebuilt.
• Indentation depends only on braces. Code that continues over several lines inside parentheses, such as a long array, is not indented further.
• A brace inside a comment or a heredoc is still counted, which can shift the depth for everything after it.
• Unbalanced braces are not reported. If the closing braces run out, the depth stops at zero and later lines are not indented.

Fixing code that lost its indentation

Indentation often disappears when code goes through a form field, an email, a chat tool or a log file. Pasting it here rebuilds the structure from the braces, so you do not need to realign each line by hand. This helps most with classes, where methods and bodies sit at different depths, and with long functions that have several nested loops and conditions.

Check the result

After formatting, scan the left edge. Each closing brace should line up with the line that opened its block. If the last brace is indented, or the code after a block is pushed in too far, a brace is missing or extra in your input. Fix that first and run the tool again.