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

bash

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

bash

php -r "print_r(scandir('phar:///Users/mglaman/Projects/php/phpstan-drupal/vendor/phpstan/phpstan/phpstan.phar/src/Type/'));"

Search within a file

bash

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

bash

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 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