Rector - Upgrade Your Legacy App to a Modern Codebase

Rector is a reconstructor tool - it does instant upgrades and instant refactoring of your code. Why refactor manually if Rector can handle 80% for you?

Open-Source First

Rector instantly upgrades and instantly refactors the PHP code of your application. It supports all modern versions of PHP and many open-source projects:

What Can Rector Do for You?

Rename classes, methods, properties, namespaces or constants
Complete parameter, var or return type declarations based on static analysis of your code
Upgrade your code from PHP 5.3 to PHP 7.4
Migrate your project from Nette to Symfony
Complete PHP 7.4 property type declarations
Refactor Laravel facades to dependency injection
And much more...

...look at the overview of all available Rectors with before/after diffs and configuration examples. You can use them to build your own sets.

How to Apply Coding Standards?

The AST libraries that Rector uses aren't well-suited for coding standards, so it's better to let coding standard tools do that.

Don't have a coding standard tool for your project? Consider adding EasyCodingStandard, PHP CS Fixer or PHP_CodeSniffer.

Tip: If you have EasyCodingStandard, you can start your set with ecs-after-rector.yaml.

Install

composer require rector/rector --dev

Did you have conflicts during composer require or on run?

Use the Docker image

Running Rector

A. Prepared Sets

Featured open-source projects have prepared sets. You can find them in /config/set or by running:

vendor/bin/rector sets

Let's say you pick the symfony40 set and you want to upgrade your /src directory:

# show a list of known changes in Symfony 4.0
vendor/bin/rector process src --set symfony40 --dry-run

# apply upgrades to your code
vendor/bin/rector process src --set symfony40

Some sets, such as code-quality can be used on a regular basis. You can include them in your rector.yaml to run them by default:

# rector.yaml
parameters:
    sets:
        - 'code-quality'
        - 'php71'
        - 'php72'
        - 'php73'

B. Custom Sets

Create a rector.yaml config file with your desired Rectors:

services:
    Rector\Rector\Architecture\DependencyInjection\AnnotatedPropertyInjectToConstructorInjectionRector:
        $annotation: "inject"

Run Rector on your /src directory:

vendor/bin/rector process src --dry-run
# apply
vendor/bin/rector process src

Features

Extra Autoloading

Rector relies on project and autoloading of its classes. To specify your own autoload file, use --autoload-file option:

vendor/bin/rector process ../project --autoload-file ../project/vendor/autoload.php

Or use a rector.yaml config file:

# rector.yaml
parameters:
    autoload_paths:
        - 'vendor/squizlabs/php_codesniffer/autoload.php'
        - 'vendor/project-without-composer'

Exclude Paths and Rectors

You can also exclude files or directories (with regex or fnmatch):

# rector.yaml
parameters:
    exclude_paths:
        - '*/src/*/Tests/*'

You can use a whole ruleset, except one rule:

# rector.yaml
parameters:
    exclude_rectors:
        - 'Rector\CodeQuality\Rector\If_\SimplifyIfReturnBoolRector'

Provide PHP Version

By default Rector uses the language features matching your system version of PHP. You can configure it for a different PHP version:

# rector.yaml
parameters:
    php_version_features: '7.2' # your version is 7.3

Paths

If you're annoyed by repeating paths in arguments, you can move them to config instead:

# rector.yaml
parameters:
    paths:
        - 'src'
        - 'tests'

Import Use Statements

FQN classes are imported by default every time Rector performs a change, so you don't have to do it manually/after each run. You can disable it by:

# rector.yaml
parameters:
    auto_import_names: false

3 Steps to Create Your Own Rector

First, make sure it's not covered by any existing Rectors.

Let's say we want to change method calls from set* to change*.

 $user = new User();
-$user->setPassword('123456');
+$user->changePassword('123456');

1. Create a New Rector and Implement Methods

Create a class that extends Rector\Rector\AbstractRector. It will inherit useful methods e.g. to check node type and name. See the source (or type $this-> in an IDE) for a list of available methods.

<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

namespace App\Rector;

use Nette\Utils\Strings;
use PhpParser\Node;
use PhpParser\Node\Identifier;
use PhpParser\Node\Expr\MethodCall;
use Rector\Rector\AbstractRector;
use Rector\RectorDefinition\CodeSample;
use Rector\RectorDefinition\RectorDefinition;

final class MyFirstRector extends AbstractRector
{
    public function getDefinition(): RectorDefinition
    {
        // what does this do?
        // minimalistic before/after sample - to explain in code
        return new RectorDefinition('Change method calls from set* to change*.', [
            new CodeSample('$user->setPassword("123456");', '$user->changePassword("123456");')
        ]);
    }

    /**
     * @return string[]
     */
    public function getNodeTypes(): array
    {
        // what node types we look for?
        // pick any node from https://github.com/rectorphp/rector/blob/master/docs/NodesOverview.md
        return [MethodCall::class];
    }

    /**
     * @param MethodCall $node - we can add "MethodCall" type here, because only this node is in "getNodeTypes()"
     */
    public function refactor(Node $node): ?Node
    {
        // we only care about "set*" method names
        if (! $this->isName($node, 'set*')) {
            // return null to skip it
            return null;
        }

        $methodCallName = $this->getName($node);
        $newMethodCallName = Strings::replace($methodCallName, '#^set#', 'change');

        $node->name = new Identifier($newMethodCallName);

        // return $node if you modified it
        return $node;
    }
}

2. Register It

# rector.yaml
services:
    App\Rector\MyFirstRector: ~

3. Let Rector Refactor Your Code

# see the diff first
vendor/bin/rector process src --dry-run

# if it's ok, apply
vendor/bin/rector process src

That's it!

How to Contribute

Just follow 3 rules:

1 feature per pull-request
New features need tests
Tests, coding standards and PHPStan checks must pass:
```
composer complete-check
```
Do you need to fix coding standards? Run:
```
composer fix-cs
```

We would be happy to accept PRs that follow these guidelines.

Run Rector in Docker

You can run Rector on your project using Docker:

docker run -v $(pwd):/project rector/rector:latest process /project/src --set symfony40 --dry-run

# Note that a volume is mounted from `pwd` (the current directory) into `/project` which can be accessed later.

Using rector.yaml:

docker run -v $(pwd):/project rector/rector:latest process /project/app --config /project/rector.yaml --autoload-file /project/vendor/autoload.php --dry-run

Community Packages

Do you use Rector to upgrade your code? Add it here:

drupal8-rector/drupal8-rector by @mxr576 for Drupal
sabbelasichon/typo3-rector for TYPO3

EmanueleMinotto/rector