Performant static analyzer for PHP, written in Rust. Catches common mistakes and enforces best practices with zero configuration required.

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🤔 Why Phanalist?

PHP codebases grow. As they grow, they accumulate technical debt — god classes that do everything, methods no one can follow, hidden complexity that breaks with every change. Traditional linters catch syntax errors and style issues, but they don't tell you if your code is maintainable.

Phanalist focuses on structural health. It measures what matters for long-term maintainability:

• Complexity metrics — cyclomatic complexity, cognitive complexity, LOC per method, nested paths
• Coupling & cohesion — Law of Demeter violations, god classes, data classes, fan-in/fan-out
• Object-oriented design — depth of inheritance, weighted methods per class, response for a class
• Readability — comment ratios, error suppression, method parameter counts

Think of it as a health checkup for your PHP code. It doesn't just tell you that something is wrong — each rule explains why it matters and how to fix it.

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✨ Features

• 🚀 Fast — built in Rust, analyzes large codebases in seconds
• 🔍 31 built-in rules — covering complexity, style, design patterns, and more
• ⚙️ Zero config to start — works out of the box, configure only what you need
• 📄 Multiple output formats — text, json, and sarif (for CI pipelines)
• 🔌 Extensible — adding a custom rule takes minutes

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Installation

The simplest way to install Phanalist is to use the installation script:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/denzyldick/phanalist/main/bin/init.sh | sh

It will automatically download the executable for your platform:

$ ~/phanalist -V
phanalist 0.1.29

There are also multiple other installation options.

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Usage

To analyze your project sources, run:

~/phanalist

Example

On the first run phanalist.yaml will be created with the default configuration and reused on all subsequent runs.

Additional CLI flags:

Flag	Description	Default
--config	Path to configuration file	./phanalist.yaml
--src	Path to project sources	./src
--output-format	Output format: text, json, sarif	text
--summary-only	Show only violation counts per rule	—
--quiet	Suppress all output	—

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Configuration

enabled_rules: []   # empty = all rules active
disable_rules: []
rules:
  E0007:
    check_constructor: true
    max_parameters: 5
  E0009:
    max_complexity: 10
  E0010:
    max_paths: 200
   E0012:
    include_namespaces:
      - "App\\Service\\"
      - "App\\Controller\\"
    exclude_namespaces: []
  E0015:
    threshold: 1
  E0016:
    max_complexity: 15
  E0024:
    max_loc: 30
  E0025:
    max_loc: 500
  E0026:
    min_ratio: 0.1
    max_ratio: 0.5
  E0027:
    max_methods: 15
    max_fields: 10
  E0028:
    max_getter_setter_ratio: 0.7
    min_methods: 3
  E0029:
    max_fan_out: 10
    max_fan_in: 20
  E0030:
    max_density: 0.3

• enabled_rules — whitelist of rules to run (empty = all)
• disable_rules — rules to skip
• rules — per-rule configuration options

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Rules

Code	Name	Options
E0000	Example rule
E0001	Opening tag position
E0002	Empty catch
E0003	Method modifiers
E0004	Uppercase constants
E0005	Capitalized class name
E0006	Property modifiers
E0007	Method parameters count	check_constructor: true, max_parameters: 5
E0008	Return type signature
E0009	Cyclomatic complexity	max_complexity: 10
E0010	Npath complexity	max_paths: 200
E0011	Detect error suppression symbol (@)
E0012	Service compatibility with Shared Memory Model	include_namespaces, exclude_namespaces, reset_interfaces
E0013	Private method not being used
E0014	Law of Demeter
E0015	Lack of Cohesion of Methods (LCOM4)	threshold: 1
E0016	Cognitive complexity	max_complexity: 15
E0017	Coupling Between Objects (CBO)	max_coupling: 10
E0018	Weighted Methods per Class (WMC)	max_wmc: 50
E0019	Response For a Class (RFC)	max_rfc: 50
E0020	Depth of Inheritance Tree (DIT)	max_depth: 4
E0021	Number of Children (NOC)	max_children: 15
E0022	Afferent and Efferent Coupling (Ca/Ce)	max_ca: 20, max_ce: 20
E0023	Instability, Abstractness, Distance (I/A/D)	max_instability: 0.8, max_abstractness: 0.8, max_distance: 0.5
E0024	Lines of Code per Method	max_loc: 30
E0025	Lines of Code per File	max_loc: 500
E0026	Comment Ratio	min_ratio: 0.1, max_ratio: 0.5
E0027	God Class (Brain Class)	max_methods: 15, max_fields: 10
E0028	Data Class	max_getter_setter_ratio: 0.7, min_methods: 3
E0029	Fan-in / Fan-out	max_fan_out: 10, max_fan_in: 20
E0030	Cyclomatic Complexity Density	max_density: 0.3

Adding a new rule is straightforward — this tutorial explains how.

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Articles

Read a series of chapters on https://dev.to/denzyldick to understand the project's internals — a great, easy-to-read introduction.

1. Write your own static analyzer for PHP.
2. How I made it impossible to write spaghetti code.
3. Detecting spaghetti code in AST of a PHP source code.
4. Getting Symfony app ready for Swoole, RoadRunner, and FrankenPHP (no AI involved).
5. Improve your CI output
6. Why using unserialize in PHP is a bad idea