Map one directory path to another in PHPStorm

Question

I'm using JetBrains PHPStorm with Vagrant. The host OS (where PHPStorm runs) is Windows, while the guest OS Vagrant sets up is Ubuntu Linux. The app resides at /var/www/ in the VM, but on the host that code is at C:\code\.

Therefore, in PHPStorm, I get warnings about unresolved directories, when in fact, the path is correct, and can be mapped directly to C:\code.

How can I tell PHPStorm that paths in the code that start with /var/www/ in my project actually map to C:\code\? I'd like path inspections to work again.

Answer 1

I never found a solution to this, but I thought I would post an answer, as I've since decided this isn't a great way to build include paths in the first place.

I came across a much better approach when reading through the Symfony framework (and Composer's generated autoloader):

<?php
// autoload.php @generated by Composer
require_once __DIR__ . '/composer' . '/autoload_real.php';
return ComposerAutoloaderInitd1d12712f9bc55fdf8d19536f1f9dd88::getLoader();

Here, the PHP magic constant __DIR__ is used as a starting point for the path. From the magic constant manual page:

__DIR__ The directory of the file. If used inside an include, the directory of the included file is returned. This is equivalent to dirname(__FILE__). This directory name does not have a trailing slash unless it is the root directory.

There are a number of benefits to this approach:

• It's portable - it will work on any operating system that PHP will run on
• It's flexible/dynamic - you can move your files around and the __DIR__ constant will reflect the new path without any code changes.
• It's familiar - other developers are more likely to recognise this approach, as it uses a native language feature, and they are likely to have come across it before.