PHPStan is a static analysis tool for PHP
What it currently checks for?
- Existence of classes used in instanceof, catch, typehints and other language constructs. PHP does not check this and just stays instead, rendering the surrounded code unused.
- Existence and accessibility of called methods and functions. It also checks the number of passed arguments.
- Whether a method returns the same type it declares to return.
- Existence and visibility of accessed properties. It will also point out if a different type from the declared one is assigned to the property.
- Correct number of parameters passed to sprintf/printf calls based on format strings.
- Existence of variables while respecting scopes of branches and loops.
- Useless casting like (string) ‘foo’ and strict comparisons (=== and !==) with different types as operands which always result in false.
The list is growing with every release. But it’s not the only thing that makes PHPStan useful.
