roave/better-reflection

Better Reflection - an improved code reflection API

Better Reflection

, _(*1)

Better Reflection is a reflection API that aims to improve and provide more features than PHP's built-in reflection API., _(*2)

Why is it better?

• You can reflect on classes that are not already loaded, without loading them
• Ability to reflect on classes directly from a string of PHP code
• Reflecting directly on closures
• Ability to extract AST from methods and functions
• Ability to return AST representation of a class or function
• Fetch return type declaration and parameter type declarations in PHP 7 code
• Moar stuff coming soon!

Typically you would use Better Reflection for static analysis tooling. It can serve as a baseline to access type information (e.g. doc blocks, type declarations), method/function body AST fetching etc. for static analysis., _(*3)

Better Reflection is NOT suited to runtime usage, since performance is much worse than PHP built-in reflection. If you do not want to do anything that native PHP reflection can't do, then just use native PHP reflection! The "Better" in Better Reflection refers to feature, not speed!, _(*4)

Be sure to read more in the feature documentation., _(*5)

Installation

Require using composer:, _(*6)

composer require roave/better-reflection

Usage

<?php

use Roave\BetterReflection\BetterReflection;

$classInfo = (new BetterReflection())
    ->reflector()
    ->reflectClass(\Foo\Bar\MyClass::class);

Documentation

• Compatibility with core Reflection API
• Basic usage instructions
• Using types
• The features
• Test suite

Upgrading

Please refer to the Upgrade Documentation documentation to see what is required to upgrade your installed BetterReflection version., _(*7)

Limitations

• PHP cannot autoload functions, therefore we cannot statically reflect functions

License

This package is released under the MIT license., _(*8)

Contributing

If you wish to contribute to the project, please read the CONTRIBUTING notes., _(*9)