Does PhpStorm have a way to highlight hardcoded strings? - php

Question

I have a config file where I store all my strings for easy reference and to make translation easier - just in case I ever need to roll out my application into one of our international locations.
I would like to remove my hardcoded strings from both HTML and PHP code.
This site shows that IntelliJ IDEA is capable of highlighting hardcoded strings. However, I see no such option in my PhpStorm 2017.2 installation.
This is one example in HTML that I'd like to purge and replace with non-hardcoded strings:
<thead>
<tr>
<th class="text-center">#</th>
<th>Benutzername</th>
<th>Nachname</th>
<th>Vorname</th>
<th>E-Mail</th>
<th>Rollen</th>
<th></th>
</tr>
</thead>
However, PhpStorm does not highlight the hardcoded strings or suggests any fix. Same goes for PHP code.
If it's of any interest, here's how I usually retrieve strings from my config array.
/**
* Extract a string from the config file depending on its tag.
*
* #param string $tag The string to extract.
*
* #return mixed The string that was extracted. At least it should usually be a string, but it could also be
* something different, depending on the config.
*/
function get_string($tag)
{
// Check the config file first.
global $config;
$string = $config['strings'][$tag];
if (!isset($string)) {
// The faulty tag can be found in the logfile.
logfile("String Tag not found: " . $tag);
$string = $tag;
}
return $string;
}
I simply give the array index to the function and retrieve the string from the config array. If I ever need internationalisation, I can modify this function.

Answer 1

You can use 'cmd + f' and search for >[a-z0-9] which does a decent job finding any instances where an HTML tag ends and a string begins

Answer 2

#axiac provided a different point of view.
HTML is in itself basically full of hardcoded strings - tags et cetera.
PHP requires many strings to work. $_GET[], $_POST[] and array indices like my $config['strings'][$tag] are a few examples.
If PhpStorm were to highlight all of these strings, all of them would have to be excluded from inspection manually.
As #axiac said:
You can use the "Find in Files" command to find the strings in the PHP
scripts (search for ['"] and check "RegExp") but you'll probably be
overwhelmed by the big number of strings, many of them being array
keys or other strings (separators, SQL queries) that are part of the
code, not of the output.