Phpstan Internals

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

Commonly Extended Interfaces

These are the PHPStan interfaces and classes that phpstan-drupal most frequently extends:

• PHPStan\Rules\Rule — Custom analysis rules
• PHPStan\Type\DynamicMethodReturnTypeExtension — Dynamic return types for method calls
• PHPStan\Type\DynamicStaticMethodReturnTypeExtension — Dynamic return types for static method calls
• PHPStan\Type\DynamicFunctionReturnTypeExtension — Dynamic return types for function calls
• PHPStan\Analyser\Scope — Analysis scope (variable types, context)
• PHPStan\Reflection\ReflectionProvider — Look up class/function reflections
• PHPStan\Reflection\MethodReflection — Method reflection data
• PHPStan\Type\Type — Base type interface
• PHPStan\Type\ObjectType — Represents a class instance type
• PHPStan\Testing\RuleTestCase — Base class for rule tests

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