Rector instantly upgrades and refactors the PHP code of your application. It can help you in 2 major areas:
Rector now supports upgrades from PHP 5.3 to 8.2 and major open-source projects like Symfony, PHPUnit, and Doctrine. Do you want to be constantly on the latest PHP and Framework without effort?
Use Rector to handle instant upgrades for you.
Do you have code quality you need, but struggle to keep it with new developers in your team? Do you want to see smart code-reviews even when every senior developers sleeps?
Add Rector to your CI and let it continuously refactor your code and keep the code quality high.
Read our blogpost to see how to set up automated refactoring.
composer require rector/rector --devThere are 2 main ways to use Rector:
- a single rule, to have the change under control
- or group of rules called sets
To use them, create a rector.php in your root directory:
vendor/bin/rectorAnd modify it:
use Rector\Config\RectorConfig;
use Rector\Set\ValueObject\SetList;
use Rector\TypeDeclaration\Rector\Property\TypedPropertyFromStrictConstructorRector;
return static function (RectorConfig $rectorConfig): void {
// register single rule
$rectorConfig->rule(TypedPropertyFromStrictConstructorRector::class);
// here we can define, what sets of rules will be applied
// tip: use "SetList" class to autocomplete sets with your IDE
$rectorConfig->sets([
SetList::CODE_QUALITY
]);
};Then dry run Rector:
vendor/bin/rector process src --dry-runRector will show you diff of files that it would change. To make the changes, drop --dry-run:
vendor/bin/rector process srcAre you curious, how Rector works internally, how to create your own rules and test them and why Rector was born? Read Rector - The Power of Automated Refactoring that will take you step by step through the Rector setup and how to create your own rules.
The Rector community is powerful thanks to active maintainers who take care of Rector sets for particular projects.
Among there projects belong:
- palantirnet/drupal-rector
- craftcms/rector
- FriendsOfShopware/shopware-rector
- sabbelasichon/typo3-rector
- sulu/sulu-rector
- efabrica-team/rector-nette
- Sylius/SyliusRector
- CoditoNet/rector-money
- laminas/laminas-servicemanager-migration
- cakephp/upgrade
- driftingly/rector-laravel
Rector is a tool that we develop and share for free, so anyone can automate their refactoring. But not everyone has dozens of hours to understand complexity of abstract-syntax-tree in their own time. That's why we provide commercial support - to save your time.
Would you like to apply Rector on your code base but don't have time for the struggle with your project? Hire us to get there faster.
See the contribution guide or go to development repository rector/rector-src.
You can use --debug option, that will print nested exceptions output:
vendor/bin/rector process src/Controller --dry-run --debugOr with Xdebug:
- Make sure Xdebug is installed and configured
- Add
--xdebugoption when running Rector
vendor/bin/rector process src/Controller --dry-run --xdebugTo assist with simple debugging Rector provides 2 helpers to pretty-print AST-nodes:
use PhpParser\Node\Scalar\String_;
$node = new String_('hello world!');
// prints node to string, as PHP code displays it
print_node($node);
// dump nested node object with nested properties
dump_node($node);
// 2nd argument is how deep the nesting is - this makes sure the dump is short and useful
dump_node($node, 1);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.
We're using ECS with this setup.