Using Language Injections

Prerequisites

Overview

You can inject other languages into string literals. This can be done within the source code written in most (but not all) of the supported languages (PHP, JavaScript, XML, and CSS). The typical examples are HTML fragments injected into JavaScript code, SQL statements in PHP or XML, and so on.

When the editor recognizes a string as a language injection:

• Syntax and error highlighting and coding assistance are extended to this string.
• You can open and modify it in a separate tab in the editor, as if you were working with the source code in the corresponding language.

  To open an injection in the editor, use the Edit <Language> Fragment intention action.

To tell PhpStorm that certain text should be treated as an embedded source code fragment, you can use:

• The Inject Language intention action, which is applied to a particular string. Note that if you use this method, it’s possible that the string literal will stay marked as a language injection only within a limited period of time. That is, PhpStorm, at a certain moment, may "forget" that the corresponding literal is a language injection. The period of the injection "persistence" will depend on the language, context and the modifications that you make in other parts of your source code.
• The Language Injection page of the Settings dialog. By creating new language injection configurations on that page, you can specify that a certain method parameter, text in an XML tag, or XML attribute should always be treated as an embedded source code fragment in another language.

  Warning

  PhpStorm comes with a set of predefined injection configurations which is quite sufficient to ensure high productivity and comfortable environment. Therefore it is strongly recommended that you use the predefined injection configurations and avoid creating new ones.

PhpStorm distinguishes the project and global states of injection configurations.

• Character strings configured as project injections are treated as source code only within the current project.
• Character strings configured as global injections are treated as source code at the PhpStorm level, that is, within any PhpStorm project.

To toggle between the project and global states, use the Move to Project/Make Global toolbar button    on the Language Injection page of the Settings dialog box.

PhpStorm supports full coding assistance for:

• CSS and JavaScript in an HTML or XML file.
• CSS, JavaScript, and SQL outside PHP code blocks and inside PHP string literals.