loganhenson / php-parser
A PHP parser written in PHP
Requires
- php: >=5.6
- ext-tokenizer: *
Requires (Dev)
- phpunit/phpunit: ~5.0
This package is auto-updated.
Last update: 2026-06-17 10:14:00 UTC
README
This is a PHP 5.2 to PHP 7.1 parser written in PHP. Its purpose is to simplify static code analysis and manipulation.
Documentation for version 3.x (stable; for running on PHP >= 5.5; for parsing PHP 5.2 to PHP 7.1).
Documentation for version 2.x (unsupported; for running on PHP >= 5.4; for parsing PHP 5.2 to PHP 7.0).
In a Nutshell
The parser turns PHP source code into an abstract syntax tree. For example, if you pass the following code into the parser:
<?php echo 'Hi', 'World'; hello\world('foo', 'bar' . 'baz');
You'll get a syntax tree looking roughly like this:
array( 0: Stmt_Echo( exprs: array( 0: Scalar_String( value: Hi ) 1: Scalar_String( value: World ) ) ) 1: Expr_FuncCall( name: Name( parts: array( 0: hello 1: world ) ) args: array( 0: Arg( value: Scalar_String( value: foo ) byRef: false ) 1: Arg( value: Expr_Concat( left: Scalar_String( value: bar ) right: Scalar_String( value: baz ) ) byRef: false ) ) ) )
You can then work with this syntax tree, for example to statically analyze the code (e.g. to find programming errors or security issues).
Additionally, you can convert a syntax tree back to PHP code. This allows you to do code preprocessing (like automatedly porting code to older PHP versions).
Installation
The preferred installation method is composer:
php composer.phar require nikic/php-parser
Documentation
- Introduction
- Usage of basic components
- Other node tree representations
- Code generation
- Frequently asked questions
Component documentation: