Use Git Commit-Msg Hook With PHP Projects

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🚀 How to Use the Git commit-msg Hook with PHP Projects

If you’re new to Git and PHP development, learning to automate and enforce commit standards is a great skill. In this article, you’ll learn how to use a Git commit-msg hook to validate your commit messages, making your Git history cleaner and more professional – especially useful when working on a team or contributing to open source.

💡 What is a commit-msg Hook?

Git hooks are scripts that run at various points in the Git lifecycle. The commit-msg hook is triggered after you enter a commit message, but before the commit is finalized.

With it, you can:

• Enforce a specific format for commit messages
• Block empty or meaningless commits
• Require ticket numbers or prefixes (e.g. “FEATURE:”, “BUGFIX:”)

🔬 Example: Require Commit Messages to Start with FEATURE:, BUGFIX:, or DOC:

Create a commit-msg hook in your project:

touch .git/hooks/commit-msg
chmod +x .git/hooks/commit-msg

Paste the following into .git/hooks/commit-msg:

#!/bin/sh

COMMIT_MSG_FILE=$1
COMMIT_MSG=$(head -n1 "$COMMIT_MSG_FILE")

case "$COMMIT_MSG" in
  FEATURE:*|BUGFIX:*|DOC:*)
    echo "✅ Commit message format OK"
    ;;
  *)
    echo "❌ Commit message must start with 'FEATURE:', 'BUGFIX:', or 'DOC:'"
    exit 1
    ;;
esac

Now try committing:

git commit -m "Refactored login"

You’ll see:

❌ Commit message must start with 'FEATURE:', 'BUGFIX:', or 'DOC:'

Try again:

git commit -m "FEATURE: Refactored login"

Now it works ✅

📷 Screenshots

🎥 Screencast: Watch It in Action

📚 Want to Learn More PHP?

This tutorial is just one piece of the puzzle. If you’re serious about becoming a professional PHP developer, check out my full course and book:

🎓 Course: Learning PHP

📖 Book: Learning PHP

You’ll go from beginner to confident developer with step-by-step tutorials, projects, and real-world examples.

👨‍🎓 Need Help? I Offer One-on-One Coaching & Consulting

If you’re stuck, want code reviewed, or need help setting up a real-world PHP project, I’m available for one-on-one online tutorials and consulting.

📩 Contact me here or schedule a session.

✅ Final Thoughts

Git hooks are a hidden gem in the developer workflow. Starting with commit-msg is a smart way to build good habits and prevent bad commits. Give it a try, and level up your Git game – your teammates will thank you!