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PHP Parser

This is a PHP parser written in PHP. It's purpose is to simplify static code analysis and manipulation.

It is based on the nikic/PHP-Parser project written by Nikita Popov. Namespaces structure is inspired from ZendFramework2.

• parsers/php-parser uses namespaces (PSR-0), nikic/PHP-Parser doesn't.
• parsers/php-parser doesn't support PHP 5.2 nikic/PHP-Parser does.

Requirements

PHP: 5.3 or 5.4

In a Nutshell

Basically, the parser does nothing more than turn some PHP code into an abstract syntax tree. ("nothing more" is kind of sarcastic here as PHP has a ... uhm, let's just say "not nice" ... grammar, which makes parsing PHP very hard.)

For example, if you stick this code in the parser:

<?php
echo 'Hi', 'World';
hello\world('foo', 'bar' . 'baz');

You'll get a syntax tree looking roughly like this:

array(
    0: PHPParser\Node\Statement\EchoStatement(
        exprs: array(
            0: PHPParser\Node\Scalar\StringScalar(
                value: Hi
            )
            1: PHPParser\Node\Scalar\StringScalar(
                value: World
            )
        )
    )
    1: PHPParser\Node\Expression\FuncCallExpression(
        name: PHPParser\Node\NameNode(
            parts: array(
                0: hello
                1: world
            )
        )
        args: array(
            0: PHPParser\Node\ArgNode(
                value: PHPParser\Node\Scalar\StringScalar(
                    value: foo
                )
                byRef: false
            )
            1: PHPParser\Node\ArgNode(
                value: PHPParser\Node\Expression\ConcatExpression(
                    left: PHPParser\Node\Scalar\StringScalar(
                        value: bar
                    )
                    right: PHPParser\Node\Scalar\StringScalar(
                        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).