tomevault-io PHPStan Internals Navigation
PHPStan is distributed as a phar file. Claude's normal file tools (Read, Grep, Glob) cannot access phar contents. Use the methods below to explore PHPStan's internal APIs when developing rules and type extensions.
Phar Location
- File:
vendor/phpstan/phpstan/phpstan.phar - Phar path prefix:
phar:///Users/mglaman/Projects/php/phpstan-drupal/vendor/phpstan/phpstan/phpstan.phar/
Method 1 — JetBrains MCP (preferred)
Use the JetBrains MCP get_symbol_info tool to look up PHPStan classes and interfaces. It resolves symbols via PhpStorm's index and returns declarations and documentation.
Find a use statement referencing the PHPStan class in any src/ file, then call get_symbol_info with the fully qualified class name.
Method 2 — PHP CLI (fallback)
When JetBrains MCP is unavailable or you need to browse directories, use PHP CLI commands via Bash.
Read a file
php -r "echo file_get_contents('phar:///Users/mglaman/Projects/php/phpstan-drupal/vendor/phpstan/phpstan/phpstan.phar/src/Type/DynamicMethodReturnTypeExtension.php');"
List a directory
php -r "print_r(scandir('phar:///Users/mglaman/Projects/php/phpstan-drupal/vendor/phpstan/phpstan/phpstan.phar/src/Type/'));"
Search within a file
php -r "echo file_get_contents('phar:///Users/mglaman/Projects/php/phpstan-drupal/vendor/phpstan/phpstan/phpstan.phar/src/Type/DynamicMethodReturnTypeExtension.php');" | grep -n 'getTypeFromMethodCall'
Search across multiple files
php -r "\$dir = 'phar:///Users/mglaman/Projects/php/phpstan-drupal/vendor/phpstan/phpstan/phpstan.phar/src/Type/'; foreach (scandir(\$dir) as \$f) { if (substr(\$f, -4) === '.php') { \$c = file_get_contents(\$dir . \$f); if (strpos(\$c, 'SearchTerm') !== false) echo \$f . PHP_EOL; }}"
Key Directories Inside the Phar
| Directory | Contents |
|---|---|
src/Analyser/ |
Scope, NodeScopeResolver, analysis engine |
src/Type/ |
Type system, type extensions interfaces |
src/Rules/ |
Built-in rules, Rule interface |
src/Reflection/ |
ReflectionProvider, class/method/property reflection |
src/PhpDoc/ |
PHPDoc parsing, type resolving |
src/DependencyInjection/ |
Container, extension loading |
src/Testing/ |
RuleTestCase, TypeInferenceTestCase base classes |
src/Node/ |
Virtual nodes (InClassNode, InClassMethodNode, etc.) |
Commonly Extended Interfaces
These are the PHPStan interfaces and classes that phpstan-drupal most frequently extends:
PHPStan\Rules\Rule— Custom analysis rulesPHPStan\Type\DynamicMethodReturnTypeExtension— Dynamic return types for method callsPHPStan\Type\DynamicStaticMethodReturnTypeExtension— Dynamic return types for static method callsPHPStan\Type\DynamicFunctionReturnTypeExtension— Dynamic return types for function callsPHPStan\Analyser\Scope— Analysis scope (variable types, context)PHPStan\Reflection\ReflectionProvider— Look up class/function reflectionsPHPStan\Reflection\MethodReflection— Method reflection dataPHPStan\Type\Type— Base type interfacePHPStan\Type\ObjectType— Represents a class instance typePHPStan\Testing\RuleTestCase— Base class for rule tests
Source: mglaman/phpstan-drupal — distributed by TomeVault.