This is a PHP 5.2 to PHP 7.0 parser written in PHP. Its purpose is to simplify static code analysis and manipulation.

Documentation for version 2.x (stable; for running on PHP >= 5.4; for parsing PHP 5.2 to PHP 7.0).

Documentation for version 1.x (stable; for running on PHP >= 5.3; for parsing PHP 5.2 to PHP 5.6).

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).

The preferred installation method is composer:

php composer.phar require nikic/php-parser 

1. Introduction
2. Usage of basic components
3. Other node tree representations
4. Code generation

Component documentation:

1. Error
2. Lexer