Generate AST of a PHP source file

Question

I want to parse a PHP source file, into an AST (preferably as a nested array of instructions).

I basically want to convert things like

f($a, $b + 1)

into something like

array( 'function_call',
    array(
        array( 'var', '$a' ),
        array( 'expression',
            array(
                array( 'binary_operation',
                    '+',
                    array ('var', '$b'),
                    array( 'int', '1' )
                )
            )
        )
    )
)

Are there any inbuilt PHP library or third party libraries (preferably in PHP) that would let me do this?

*(tip)* [Sebastian Bergmann's slides on Analyzing PHP Code](http://www.slideshare.net/sebastian_bergmann/analysing-php-code) — Gordon, May 27 '11 at 15:42

score 26 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

26

I have implemented a PHP Parser after I figured out that there was no existing parser. It parses the PHP code into a node tree.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

Community

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answered May 27 '11 at 14:29

NikiC

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I just tried out your parser, and I think it may be good enough for my use. I have one problem though - there's no license file in your project, and there's no mention of anything related to that, so I'm not sure if I could use this in my project. – Dogbert May 27 '11 at 15:30
@Dogbert: Yes, I haven't added one yet ;) It is MIT/BSD. So you should be able to use it in pretty much any project. – NikiC May 27 '11 at 15:37
@NikiC: If it doesn't contain the license, it isn't anything. Nobody will pay any attention what you claim it is, here. – Ira Baxter Sep 02 '14 at 18:54
8

@IraBaxter Thank you for this most insightful of comments. Now look at the dates on the above comments and at the LICENSE file in the linked repository. – NikiC Sep 02 '14 at 19:06
@NikiC: Good that you have it. Even better that have clarified here after this long time, that it is in place. You're welcome. – Ira Baxter Sep 02 '14 at 19:46
Hi, @NikiC, thank you for writing this nice parser. However, I don't know how to use it, should I compile it along with PHP7? Thank you! – naizheng TAN Sep 28 '15 at 21:03

Jens A. Koch · Answer 2 · 2015-04-24T10:21:43.960

8

HipHop

You can use Facebook's HHVM to dump the AST.

apt-get install hhvm

# parse specified file and dump the AST
hhvm --parse arg

This worked for HipHop (the old PHP to C++ compiler) - back in the days of 2013!

HHVM

Update 2015

--parse is not supported.

You will get an error: HHVM The 'parse' command line option is not supported.

See https://github.com/facebook/hhvm/blob/c494c3a145008f65d349611eb2d09d0c33f1ab23/hphp/runtime/base/program_functions.cpp#L1111

Feature Request to support the CLI option again: https://github.com/facebook/hhvm/issues/4615

PHP 7

PHP 7 will have an AST, see the related RFC.

There are two extensions, which provide access and expose the AST generated by PHP 7:

edited Apr 24 '15 at 10:21

answered Apr 06 '13 at 18:41

Jens A. Koch

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This outputs `Error in command line: unrecognised option '--parse'` for me. I'm on Ubuntu 14.04, installed the `hhvm` package from the repo at http://dl.hhvm.com/ubuntu as explained [here](https://github.com/facebook/hhvm/wiki/Prebuilt-packages-on-Ubuntu-14.04), `hhvm --version` outputs HipHop VM 3.6.1. When I call `hhvm --help` there does indeed not seem to be a `--parse` option. – Malte Skoruppa Apr 24 '15 at 10:03
1

Yo! This dates back to HipHop in 2013. Updated my answer to reflect the current situation. – Jens A. Koch Apr 24 '15 at 10:11

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

2

Well, you can look at the answers from Parsing and Printing PHP Code and Generating PHP code (from Parser Tokens): basically PEAR's PHP_Beautifier package at http://pear.php.net/package/PHP_Beautifier can be extended to do what you want, but it sounds like it requires some heavy lifting.

And if you're not constrained to PHP then http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/articles/ast/PHP_AST.html walks you through using the Eclipse PHP module's AST parser.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

Community

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answered May 27 '11 at 14:31

Femi

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Some of the links in the answers to [Is there a static code analyzer like Lint for PHP files](http://stackoverflow.com/q/378959) may also be helpful. – Jorik May 27 '11 at 14:36

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 04 '12 at 05:18

2

Pfff is an OCaml library for parsing and manipulating PHP code. See the manual of Pfff for more details.

answered Jan 04 '12 at 05:18

reprogrammer

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered May 27 '11 at 14:30

1

No, there is no such feature built-in. But you can use the Tokenizer to create it.

answered May 27 '11 at 14:30

KingCrunch

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Generate AST of a PHP source file

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