I think we have come full circle within the course of this chapter. We started with a philosophical discussion; as well as an examination of the pros and cons of a common coding standard. We then proceeded to formulate a coding standard that can serve as a foundation for any PHP development project— whether it consists of a single developer or dozens spread throughout the globe.
Realizing that having a standard alone is not enough, we looked at PHP_CodeSniffer as a tool for validating code against a pre-defined standard. We even learned how to translate our coding guidelines to PHP code that PHP_CodeSniffer can use when checking the source files. Lastly, we briefly discussed that automating or integrating source validation is an effective way of actually enforcing the standard without having to waste too much time reviewing code manually.
The standard we defined in this chapter is not the answer to all your coding standard needs. I'm sure you were objecting to some of the rules I defined as you were reading through them. That's ok. The important thing is to have a coding standard at all. You can never make everybody happy, but you can make sure that the team benefits from the coding standard, even if the members don't agree with each and every detail.
Rather than blindly adopting the coding standard in this or any other standard for that matter, you might want to take the time to examine it and customize it for your purposes. Also, a coding standard evolves over time along with the language itself. With PHP6 due to be released in the near future, we will have to revisit our standard and see how to best improve it to reflect all the exciting new features.