# PHPantom

Spookaphant
CI codecov crates

A fast, lightweight PHP language server written in Rust. Ready in seconds, uses a fraction of the RAM other language servers need, and stays responsive throughout. No indexing phase, no waiting. Check out the **[documentation](https://phpantom-dev.github.io/phpantom_lsp/)** to get started. > [!NOTE] > PHPantom is in active development. The core editing features are solid and used daily on production codebases. ## Features PHPantom focuses on deep type intelligence. Here's how it compares: | | PHPantom | Intelephense | PHP Tools | Phpactor | PHPStorm | | ------------------------------- | -------- | ------------ | ---------- | ----------- | ----------- | | Common LSP features1 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Workspace symbols | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Call hierarchy | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | Semantic tokens | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | | Linked editing | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | | Extras2 | ✅ | 💰 | 🚧 | 🚧 | ✅ | | **Diagnostics** | | | | | | | PHPStan integration | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | 🚧 | 🚧 | | Undefined variable | ✅ | 💰 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Type errors | ✅ | 💰 | ✅ | 🚧 | ✅ | | Unused variable | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | | **Type Intelligence** | | | | | | | Generics / `@template` | ✅ | 🚧 | ✅ | 🚧 | ✅ | | `@mixin` completion | ✅ | 💰 | ✅ | ✅ | 🚧 | | Array / object shapes | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | 🚧 | 🚧 | | PHPStan types | ✅ | ❌ | 🚧 | 🚧 | 🚧 | | Conditional return types | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | 🚧 | ❌ | | Closure parameter inference | ✅ | 🚧 | 🚧 | 🚧 | 🚧 | | Laravel | ✅ | ❌ | 🚧 | ❌ | 🚧 | | Blade templates | 🚧 | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | | Other frameworks4 | 🚧 | 🚧 | 🚧 | 🚧 | 🧩 | | **Refactoring** | | | | | | | Rename | ✅ | 💰 | 💰 | ✅ | ✅ | | Common refactorings3 | ✅ | ❌ | 💰 | ✅ | ✅ | | Extract constant | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | | Extract interface | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | | Promote constructor parameter | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | Simplify expressions | ✅ | ❌ | 💰 | ❌ | ✅ | | Modernize syntax5 | ✅ | ❌ | 💰 | ❌ | ✅ | | **Performance** | | | | | | | Time to ready | 5 s | 1 min 25 s | 3 min 17 s | 15 min 39 s | 17 min 55 s | | RAM usage | 360 MB | 520 MB | 3.9 GB | 498 MB | 1.7 GB | | Disk cache | 0 | 45 MB | 0 | 4.1 GB | 551 MB | 🚧 = partial support. 🧩 = requires plugin. 💰 = paid tier.
1 Completion, hover, signature help, go-to-definition, find references, diagnostics, document symbols.
2 Auto-import, go-to implementation / type-definition, smart select, folding ranges, formatting, code lens, inlay hints, type hierarchy, document links.
3 Implement interface methods, extract method/function, extract/inline variable, generate constructor, generate getter/setter.
4 CakePHP, non-Composer WordPress, Symfony, Behat, PHPUnit, and Prophecy, and Twig.
5 Convert between arrow functions and closures, and switch statements to match expressions.
Performance measured on a production codebase: 21K PHP files, 1.5M lines of code (vendor + application). Time to ready is CPU time consumed until full type intelligence is available on a cold start (first index); tools with a disk cache launch faster on subsequent starts. > **Want to verify?** Open [`examples/demo.php`](examples/demo.php) in your editor and trigger completion at the marked locations. It exercises every type intelligence feature in the table, including edge cases where tools diverge. For Laravel specifically, open [`examples/laravel/`](examples/laravel/) — a standalone project with real Eloquent models, config, routes, views, and translations that exercises Eloquent property resolution, query builder chaining, scopes, custom collections, and go-to-definition for config keys, route names, and translation strings. ## Context-Aware Intelligence - **Smart PHPDoc completion.** `@throws` detects uncaught exceptions in the method body, `@param` pre-fills from the signature, and tags are filtered to context and never suggested twice. - **Array shape inference.** Literal arrays offer key completion with no annotation. Nested shapes, spreads, and array functions like `array_map` preserve element types. - **Closure parameter inference.** `$users->map(fn($u) => $u->name)` infers `$u` as `User` from the collection's generic context. - **Conditional return types.** PHPStan-style conditional `@return` types resolve to the concrete branch at each call site. - **Type aliases and shapes.** `@phpstan-type`, `@phpstan-import-type`, and `object{...}` shapes all resolve through to completions. - **Laravel.** Eloquent relationships, scopes, accessors, casts, and Builder chains resolve end-to-end. Macros behave like real methods. Container strings like `app('cache')` resolve to the bound class, `auth()->user()` resolves to your configured model, and query string compleation on both relation and column names. Blade templates get completion, hover, go-to-definition, and diagnostics through virtual PHP preprocessing. No ide-helper or database access required. - **Everything else you'd expect.** Generics, type narrowing, named arguments, destructuring, first-class callables, anonymous classes, `@deprecated` detection, and namespace segment drilling. ## Project Awareness PHPantom understands Composer projects out of the box, but works without setup on non-Composer projects too: - **Autoloader-accurate results.** Completions and go-to-definition only surface classes that Composer's autoloader can actually load, avoiding false positives from internal, inaccessible, or duplicate vendor classes. You see exactly what your application can use. - **PSR-4 correctness.** Qucik fixes for when the namespace or class name does not match their PSR-4 path. - **PSR-4 autoloading.** Resolves classes across files on demand. - **Classmap and file autoloading.** `autoload_classmap.php` and `autoload_files.php`. - **Embedded PHP stubs** from [phpstorm-stubs](https://github.com/JetBrains/phpstorm-stubs) bundled in the binary, no runtime downloads needed. - **Drupal project support.** Detects Drupal projects via `composer.json`, resolves the web root, and indexes Drupal-specific directories and PHP extensions (`.module`, `.install`, `.theme`, etc.) with `.gitignore` bypassed so that Composer-managed core and contrib code is always available. - **`require_once` discovery.** Functions from required files are available for completion. - **Go-to-implementation.** Jump from an interface or abstract class to all concrete implementations. Scans open files, classmap, PSR-4 directories, and embedded stubs. - **Workspace-wide diagnostics.** After startup, diagnostics run in the background across every file in the project, not just the ones you have open, so problems are already visible when you navigate to a file. Configured external tools (PHPStan, PHPCS, Mago) run project-wide too, once the background pass finishes. Both are deferred until after startup so they never slow down time to ready. ## Acknowledgements PHPantom stands on the shoulders of: - **[Mago](https://github.com/carthage-software/mago):** the PHP parser that powers all of PHPantom's AST analysis. - **[PHPStan](https://phpstan.org/) and [Psalm](https://psalm.dev/):** for their pioneering work in PHP static analysis and shaping the type ecosystem. PHPantom builds on PHPStan-informed type experience, with full support for `@phpstan-*` annotations. - **[JetBrains phpstorm-stubs](https://github.com/JetBrains/phpstorm-stubs):** type information for the entire PHP standard library, embedded directly into the binary. - **[Phpactor](https://github.com/phpactor/phpactor):** the PHP language server whose comprehensive test suite and benchmark fixtures informed PHPantom's own test coverage. Many of PHPantom's type inference fixtures were adapted from Phpactor's reflection tests. ## License MIT. See [LICENSE](LICENSE).