10 BEST PHP STATIC ANALYSIS LIBRARIES

Here are the best PHP Static analysis libraries, which can be utilized to debug software programs that involve examining the code without running the application.  

The automatic source code analysis done without running the application is known as static analysis. Dynamic analysis refers to analysis carried out while a program is being executed. Static analysis frequently finds security flaws, performance problems, standard-compliance violations, and outdated programming structures. All static analysis tools share the fundamental idea of examining source code for coding patterns marked with a warning or other information. By customizing the static analysis tool to measure portions of the code and only report on a subset of rules, some programmers use static analysis as an objective indicator of the quality of their code.  

The top-of-the-board libraries are mentioned below to cause static analysis of PHP source code to be straightforward for developers. 

phpstan- 

• Without running your code, PHPStan concentrates on locating problems in it.  
• Finds entire classes of errors even before you write code tests.  
• Brings PHP closer to compiled languages in that the validity of each line of code can be tested before running it. 

phan- 

• Prefers to minimize false positives. 
• Attempts to prove incorrectness rather than correctness. 
• Can verify type compatibility on various operations. 
• The most straightforward way to use Phan is via Composer.

psalm- 

• Takes care of taint analysis, type inference, and security analysis.  
• Tends to find errors in PHP applications. 
• It helps to maintain a wide variety of codebases. 

PhpMetrics- 

• Provides metrics about PHP projects and classes. 
• Generates beautiful and readable HTML reports. 
• Understandable static analysis tool. 

noverify- 

• Can analyze changes in git and show only new reports. 
• Has PHP 7 and PHP 8 support. 
• It is fast and can analyze 100k LOC/s. 

PhpDependencyAnalysis- 

• Finds violation in a dependency graph. 
• Extendable static code analysis for object-oriented PHP-Projects. 
• Generate dependency graph from abstract classes.

Mondrian- 

• Uses graph theory for static analysis. 
• Helps to add abstraction into concrete classes. 
• The generated HTML file does not require any dependencies or a connection. 

Exakat- 

• Smart engine for static code analysis. 
• Automated code review is possible. 
• Is a great review tool and an analysis framework. 

Vulny-Code-Static-Analysis- 

• It is a python script-based static analysis tool. 
• Works based on regular expressions or regex. 
• Can detect vulnerabilities in PHP source code.

progpilot- 

• A tool specialized in static analysis in security. 
• Is possible to use progpilot inside PHP code. 
• The taint analysis configuration is customizable.