# 🛠️ PHP Parser Developer Guide
Php support for the Oak language framework.
This guide is designed to help you quickly get started with developing and integrating `oak-php`.
## 🚦 Quick Start
Add the dependency to your `Cargo.toml`:
```toml
[dependencies]
oak-php = { path = "..." }
```
### Basic Parsing Example
The following is a standard workflow for parsing modern PHP with attributes, enums, and promoted properties:
```rust
use oak_php::{PhpParser, SourceText, PhpLanguage};
fn main() {
// 1. Prepare source code
let code = r#"
<?php
namespace App\Core;
#[Attribute]
enum Status: string {
case Active = 'active';
case Inactive = 'inactive';
}
class User {
public function __construct(
public readonly string $username,
private Status $status = Status::Active,
) {}
public function greet(): string {
return "Hello, {$this->username}!";
}
}
"#;
let source = SourceText::new(code);
// 2. Initialize parser
let config = PhpLanguage::new();
let parser = PhpParser::new(&config);
// 3. Execute parsing
let result = parser.parse(&source);
// 4. Handle results
if result.is_success() {
println!("Parsing successful! AST node count: {}", result.node_count());
} else {
eprintln!("Errors found during parsing.");
for diag in result.diagnostics() {
println!("[{}:{}] {}", diag.line, diag.column, diag.message);
}
}
}
```
## 🔍 Core API Usage
### 1. Syntax Tree Traversal
After a successful parse, you can use the built-in visitor pattern or manually traverse the Green/Red Tree to extract PHP specific constructs like class definitions, attributes, enums, promoted properties, and arrow functions.
### 2. Incremental Parsing
PHP projects (especially those using frameworks like Laravel or Symfony) can contain thousands of files. `oak-php` supports sub-millisecond incremental updates:
```rust
// Re-parse only the modified section
let new_result = parser.reparse(&new_source, &old_result);
```
### 3. Mixed Content Handling
The parser correctly handles mixed HTML and PHP files, identifying `<?php ... ?>` tags and maintaining the structural integrity of both the code and the surrounding template.
## 🏗️ Architecture Overview
- **Lexer**: Tokenizes PHP source text, supporting complex string interpolations (`{$var}`), heredocs, nowdocs, and various numeric literal formats.
- **Parser**: A high-performance syntax analyzer that handles PHP's complex grammar, including modern 8.x features and legacy constructs.
- **AST**: A strongly-typed, lossless syntax tree that preserves all trivia (comments/whitespace) for refactoring and formatting tools.
## 🔗 Advanced Resources
- **Full Examples**: Check the [examples/](examples/) folder in the project root.
- **API Documentation**: Run `cargo doc --open` for detailed type definitions.
- **Test Cases**: See [tests/readme.md](tests/readme.md) for handling of various PHP versions and edge cases.