Rector - Speedup Your PHP Development

Rector helps you with 2 areas - major code changes and in daily work.

• Do you have a legacy code base? Do you want to have that latest version of PHP or your favorite framework? → Rector gets you there with instant upgrade.

• Do you have code quality you need, but struggle to keep it with new developers in your team? Do you wish to have code-reviews for each member of your team, but don't have time for it? → Add Rector to you CI and let it fix your code for you. Get instant feedback after each commit.

It's a tool that we develop and share for free, so you anyone can automate their refactoring.

Hire us to skip learning Rector, AST and nodes, to educate your team about Rectors benefits and to setup Rector in your project - so you can enjoy the 300 % development speed 👍

• Try Rector Online

Show Case: Complete 2700 @var annotations in 2 mins

How does this work?

Open-Source First

Rector instantly upgrades and refactors the PHP code of your application. It supports all versions of PHP from 5.2 and major open-source projects:

What Can Rector Do for You?

• Upgrade 30 000 unit tests from PHPUnit 6 to 9 in 2 weeks
• Complete PHP 7.4 property type declarations
• Migrate your project from Nette to Symfony
• Refactor Laravel Facades to Dependency Injection
• And much more...

Documentation

• Explore 600+ Rector Rules
• How Does Rector Work?
• PHP Parser Nodes Overview

Advanced

• How To Run Rector on Changed Files Only
• How to Ignore Rule or Paths
• How to Configure Rule
• How To Work with Doc Block and Comments
• How run Rector in Docker
• Add Checkstyle with your CI

Contributing

• How to Add Test for Rector Rule
• How to Create New Rector Rule
• How to Generate New Rector Rule with Recipe

Install

composer require rector/rector --dev

• Having conflicts during composer require? → Use the Rector Prefixed
• Using a different PHP version than Rector supports? → Use the Docker image

Running Rector

There a 2 main ways to use Rector:

• a single rule, to have the change under control - you can choose from over 600 rules
• or group of rules called sets - pick from sets

To use them, create a rector.php in your root directory:

vendor/bin/rector init

And modify it:

// rector.php


use Rector\Core\Configuration\Option;
use Rector\Php74\Rector\Property\TypedPropertyRector;
use Rector\Set\ValueObject\SetList;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Loader\Configurator\ContainerConfigurator;

return static function (ContainerConfigurator $containerConfigurator): void {
    // here we can define, what sets of rules will be applied
    $parameters = $containerConfigurator->parameters();
    $parameters->set(Option::SETS, [SetList::CODE_QUALITY]);

    // register single rule
    $services = $containerConfigurator->services();
    $services->set(TypedPropertyRector::class);
};

Then dry run Rector:

vendor/bin/rector process src --dry-run

Rector will show you diff of files that it would change. To make the changes, drop --dry-run:

vendor/bin/rector process src

Note: rector.php is loaded by default. For different location, use --config option.

Full Config Configuration

// rector.php
use Rector\Core\Configuration\Option;
use Rector\Core\ValueObject\PhpVersion;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Loader\Configurator\ContainerConfigurator;

return static function (ContainerConfigurator $containerConfigurator): void {
    $parameters = $containerConfigurator->parameters();

    // paths to refactor; solid alternative to CLI arguments
    $parameters->set(Option::PATHS, [__DIR__ . '/src', __DIR__ . '/tests']);

    // Rector relies on autoload setup of your project; Composer autoload is included by default; to add more:
    $parameters->set(Option::AUTOLOAD_PATHS, [
        // autoload specific file
        __DIR__ . '/vendor/squizlabs/php_codesniffer/autoload.php',
        // or full directory
        __DIR__ . '/vendor/project-without-composer',
    ]);

    // is your PHP version different from the one your refactor to? [default: your PHP version], uses PHP_VERSION_ID format
    $parameters->set(Option::PHP_VERSION_FEATURES, PhpVersion::PHP_7_2);

    // auto import fully qualified class names? [default: false]
    $parameters->set(Option::AUTO_IMPORT_NAMES, true);

    // skip root namespace classes, like \DateTime or \Exception [default: true]
    $parameters->set(Option::IMPORT_SHORT_CLASSES, false);

    // skip classes used in PHP DocBlocks, like in /** @var \Some\Class */ [default: true]
    $parameters->set(Option::IMPORT_DOC_BLOCKS, false);

    // Run Rector only on changed files
    $parameters->set(Option::ENABLE_CACHE, true);
};

Symfony Container

To work with some Symfony rules, you now need to link your container XML file

// rector.php


use Rector\Core\Configuration\Option;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Loader\Configurator\ContainerConfigurator;

return static function (ContainerConfigurator $containerConfigurator): void {
    $parameters = $containerConfigurator->parameters();

    $parameters->set(
        Option::SYMFONY_CONTAINER_XML_PATH_PARAMETER,
        __DIR__ . '/var/cache/dev/AppKernelDevDebugContainer.xml'
    );
};

How to Contribute

See the contribution guide.

Debugging

You can use --debug option, that will print nested exceptions output:

vendor/bin/rector process src/Controller --dry-run --debug

Or with Xdebug:

1. Make sure Xdebug is installed and configured
2. Add --xdebug option when running Rector

vendor/bin/rector process src/Controller --dry-run --xdebug

To assist with echo-style debugging rector provides a rd() helper method which is usefull to pretty-print AST-nodes:

/**
 * @param Class_ $node
 */
public function refactor(Node $node): ?Node
{
    rd($node);
    die;
}

Community Packages

Do you use Rector to upgrade your code? Add it here:

• palantirnet/drupal-rector by Palantir.net for Drupal
• sabbelasichon/typo3-rector for TYPO3

Known Drawbacks

How to Apply Coding Standards?

Rector uses nikic/php-parser, built on technology called an abstract syntax tree (AST). An AST doesn't know about spaces and when written to a file it produces poorly formatted code in both PHP and docblock annotations. That's why your project needs to have a coding standard tool and a set of formatting rules, so it can make Rector's output code nice and shiny again.

Don't have a coding standard tool? Add ECS and use prepared ecs-after-rector.php set.