syntaxx/phpx-parser

A PHPX parser written in PHP

v5.4.2 2025-10-26 20:55 UTC

Requires

• php: >=7.4
• ext-ctype: *
• ext-json: *
• ext-tokenizer: *

Requires (Dev)

• ircmaxell/php-yacc: ^0.0.7
• phpunit/phpunit: ^9.0

BSD-3-Clause

• Nikita Popov

• php
• parser

README

This is PHPX, a fork of PHP-Parser with added support for JSX syntax. It extends the original PHP parser to support static code analysis and manipulation of both PHP and JSX code.

Documentation for version 5.x (current; for running on PHP >= 7.4; for parsing PHP 7.0 to PHP 8.4, with limited support for parsing PHP 5.x).

Documentation for version 4.x (supported; for running on PHP >= 7.0; for parsing PHP 5.2 to PHP 8.3).

Features

The main features provided by this library are:

• Parsing PHP 7, PHP 8, and JSX code into an abstract syntax tree (AST).
  • Invalid code can be parsed into a partial AST.
  • The AST contains accurate location information.
  • Full support for JSX syntax and components.
• Dumping the AST in human-readable form.
• Converting an AST back to PHP/JSX code.
  • Formatting can be preserved for partially changed ASTs.
• Infrastructure to traverse and modify ASTs.
• Resolution of namespaced names.
• Evaluation of constant expressions.
• Builders to simplify AST construction for code generation.
• Converting an AST into JSON and back.

Quick Start

Install the library using composer:

php composer.phar require kambo/php-x-parser

Parse some PHP/JSX code into an AST and dump the result in human-readable form:

<?php
use PhpParser\Error;
use PhpParser\NodeDumper;
use PhpParser\ParserFactory;

$code = <<<'CODE'
<?php

function test($foo)
{
    return <div>
        <h1>Hello {$foo}</h1>
        <p>This is JSX in PHP!</p>
    </div>;
}
CODE;

$parser = (new ParserFactory())->createForNewestSupportedVersion();
try {
    $ast = $parser->parse($code);
} catch (Error $error) {
    echo "Parse error: {$error->getMessage()}\n";
    return;
}

$dumper = new NodeDumper;
echo $dumper->dump($ast) . "\n";

This dumps an AST looking something like this:

array(
    0: Stmt_Function(
        attrGroups: array(
        )
        byRef: false
        name: Identifier(
            name: test
        )
        params: array(
            0: Param(
                attrGroups: array(
                )
                flags: 0
                type: null
                byRef: false
                variadic: false
                var: Expr_Variable(
                    name: foo
                )
                default: null
            )
        )
        returnType: null
        stmts: array(
            0: Stmt_Return(
                expr: Expr_JSX(
                    tag: 'div'
                    attributes: array(
                    )
                    children: array(
                        0: Expr_JSX(
                            tag: 'h1'
                            attributes: array(
                            )
                            children: array(
                                0: Expr_JSX_Text(
                                    value: 'Hello '
                                )
                                1: Expr_JSX_Expression(
                                    expr: Expr_Variable(
                                        name: foo
                                    )
                                )
                            )
                        )
                        1: Expr_JSX(
                            tag: 'p'
                            attributes: array(
                            )
                            children: array(
                                0: Expr_JSX_Text(
                                    value: 'This is JSX in PHP!'
                                )
                            )
                        )
                    )
                )
            )
        )
    )
)

Let's traverse the AST and perform some kind of modification. For example, drop all function bodies:

use PhpParser\Node;
use PhpParser\Node\Stmt\Function_;
use PhpParser\NodeTraverser;
use PhpParser\NodeVisitorAbstract;

$traverser = new NodeTraverser();
$traverser->addVisitor(new class extends NodeVisitorAbstract {
    public function enterNode(Node $node) {
        if ($node instanceof Function_) {
            // Clean out the function body
            $node->stmts = [];
        }
    }
});

$ast = $traverser->traverse($ast);
echo $dumper->dump($ast) . "\n";

This gives us an AST where the Function_::$stmts are empty:

array(
    0: Stmt_Function(
        attrGroups: array(
        )
        byRef: false
        name: Identifier(
            name: test
        )
        params: array(
            0: Param(
                attrGroups: array(
                )
                type: null
                byRef: false
                variadic: false
                var: Expr_Variable(
                    name: foo
                )
                default: null
            )
        )
        returnType: null
        stmts: array(
        )
    )
)

Finally, we can convert the new AST back to PHP code:

use PhpParser\PrettyPrinter;

$prettyPrinter = new PrettyPrinter\Standard;
echo $prettyPrinter->prettyPrintFile($ast);

This gives us our original code, minus the JSX content inside the function:

<?php

function test($foo)
{
}

For a more comprehensive introduction, see the documentation.

Documentation

1. Introduction
2. Usage of basic components

Component documentation:

• Walking the AST
  • Node visitors
  • Modifying the AST from a visitor
  • Short-circuiting traversals
  • Interleaved visitors
  • Simple node finding API
  • Parent and sibling references
• Name resolution
  • Name resolver options
  • Name resolution context
• Pretty printing
  • Converting AST back to PHP/JSX code
  • Customizing formatting
  • Formatting-preserving code transformations
• AST builders
  • Fluent builders for AST nodes
• Lexer
  • Emulation
  • Tokens, positions and attributes
• Error handling
  • Column information for errors
  • Error recovery (parsing of syntactically incorrect code)
• Constant expression evaluation
  • Evaluating constant/property/etc initializers
  • Handling errors and unsupported expressions
• JSON representation
  • JSON encoding and decoding of ASTs
• Performance
  • Disabling Xdebug
  • Reusing objects
  • Garbage collection impact
• Frequently asked questions
  • Parent and sibling references
• JSX Support
  • JSX syntax and components
  • JSX expressions and attributes
  • JSX transformation