PHPEncoder is a PHP library for exporting variables and generating PHP code representations for said variables similar to the built in function var_export(). Compared to the built in function, however, this library provides more options to customize the output, which makes it easier to generate code for different kinds of purposes such as readable configuration files or optimized cache files.

The purpose of this library is to address some of the shortcomings with the built in var_export(). For example, there is no way to control the amount of whitespace in the output and there is no way to choose between different array notations. This library also provides functionality to convert objects into PHP code that is actually useful when compared to the built in function.

The large number of customization options in this library allows you to create code that fits your purposes. You can create very compact code, when you need to limit the size of the output, or you can create code in the style that actually fits in any of your dynamically generated PHP files.

The API documentation, which can be generated using Apigen, can be read online at: http://kit.riimu.net/api/phpencoder/

In order to use this library, the following requirements must be met:

• PHP version 5.4

This library can be installed by using Composer. In order to do this, you must download the latest Composer version and run the require command to add this library as a dependency to your project. The easiest way to complete these two tasks is to run the following two commands in your terminal:

php -r "readfile('https://getcomposer.org/installer');" | php
php composer.phar require "riimu/kit-phpencoder:2.*"

If you already have Composer installed on your system and you know how to use it, you can also install this library by adding it as a dependency to your composer.json file and running the composer install command. Here is an example of what your composer.json file could look like:

{
    "require": {
        "riimu/kit-phpencoder": "2.*"
    }
}

After installing this library via Composer, you can load the library by including the vendor/autoload.php file that was generated by Composer during the installation.

You can also install this library manually without using Composer. In order to do this, you must download the latest release and extract the src folder from the archive to your project folder. To load the library, you can simply include the src/autoload.php file that was provided in the archive.

The most relevant method provided by this library is the encode() method provided by PHPEncoder. The method takes any value as an argument and returns the PHP code representation for that value.

For example:

<?php

require 'vendor/autoload.php';
$encoder = new \Riimu\Kit\PHPEncoder\PHPEncoder();
echo $encoder->encode(['foo' => 'bar', [1, true, false, null, 1.0]]);

This would create the following output:

[
    'foo' => 'bar',
    [1, true, false, null, 1.0],
]

Of course, the most important feature of this library is the ability to customize the created the PHP code. As the second argument, the encode() method takes an array of options, which can be used to customize the returned PHP code. For example:

<?php

require 'vendor/autoload.php';
$encoder = new \Riimu\Kit\PHPEncoder\PHPEncoder();
echo $encoder->encode(['foo' => 'bar', [1, true, false, null, 1.0]], [
    'array.inline' => false,
    'array.omit' => false,
    'array.indent' => 2,
    'boolean.capitalize' => true,
    'null.capitalize' => true,
]);

This would create the following output:

[
  'foo' => 'bar',
  0 => [
    0 => 1,
    1 => TRUE,
    2 => FALSE,
    3 => NULL,
    4 => 1.0,
  ],
]

Encoding options allow you to customize the output of the encode() method. It is possible to set these options in three different ways:

• Options can be provided as an array to the PHPEncoder constructor.
• Option values can be set via the setOption() method.
• Options can be passed as an array as the second argument to the encode() method.

Note that options passed to the encode() method are only temporary and do not apply to following calls.

• whitespace : <boolean> (true)
  When set to false, generation of all extra whitespace is disabled and all other settings that affect whitespace are ignored.

• null.capitalize : <boolean> (false)
  When set to true, all null values are written in upper case instead of lower case.

• boolean.capitalize : <boolean> (false)
  When set to true, all true and false values are written in upper case instead of lower case.

• float.integers : <boolean|"all"> (false)
  When set to true, any float that represents an integer and has a value that is accurately represented by the floating point number will be encoded as an integer instead of a float. (e.g. the value 2.0 will be encoded as 2). To include the values that are not accurately represented, you may set option to "all".

• float.precision : <integer|false> (17)
  The maximum precision of encoded floating point values, which usually also means the maximum number of digits in encoded floats. If the value is set to false, the PHP ini setting serialize_precision will be used instead. Note that due to the way floating point values work, a value greater than 17 does not provide any additional precision.

• string.escape : <boolean> (true)
  When set to true, all strings containing bytes outside the 32-126 ASCII range will be written with double quotes and the characters outside the range will be escaped.

• array.short : <boolean> (true)
  When set to true, arrays are enclosed using square brackets [] instead using of the long array notation array().

• array.base : <integer|string> (0)
  Base indentation for arrays as a number of spaces or as a string. Provides convenience when you need to output code to a file with specific level of indentation.

• array.indent : <integer|string> (4)
  Amount of indentation for single level of indentation as a number of spaces or a string.

• array.align : <boolean> (false)
  When set to true, array assignment operators => are aligned to the same column using spaces. Even if enabled, array.omit and array.inline options are still respected, but only if all the keys in the specific array can be omitted.

• array.inline : <boolean|integer> (70)
  When set to true, any array that can be written without any array keys will be written in a single line. If an integer is provided instead, the array will be written as a single line only if it does not exceed that number of characters. This option has no effect when array.omit is set to false.

• array.omit : <boolean> (true)
  When set to true, any redundant array keys will not be included (e.g. the array [0 => 'a', 1 => 'b'] would be encoded just as ['a', 'b']).

• array.eol : <string|false> (false)
  The end of line character used by array output. When set to false, the default PHP_EOL will be used instead.

• object.method : <boolean> (true)
  When set to true, any encoded object will be checked for methods toPHP() and toPHPValue(). If the method toPHP() exists, the returned string will be used as the PHP code representation of the object. If the method toPHPValue() exists instead, the returned value will be encoded as PHP and used as the code representation of the object.

• object.format : <string> ('vars')
  Default object encoding format. The possible values are:

  • string casts the object to string and then encodes that string as PHP.
  • serialize serializes the object and wraps it with unserialize()
  • export mimics the var_export() object representation
  • array casts the object to an array and encodes that array
  • vars turns object into an array using get_object_vars()
  • iterate turns the object into an array by iterating over it with foreach

• object.cast : <boolean> (true)
  Whether to add an (object) cast in front of arrays generated from objects or not when using the object encoding formats vars, array or iterate.

• recursion.detect : <boolean> (true)
  When set to true, the encoder will attempt to detect circular references in arrays and objects to avoid infinite loops.

• recursion.ignore : <boolean> (false)
  When set to true, any circular reference will be replaced with null instead of throwing an exception.

• recursion.max : <integer|false> (false)
  Maximum number of levels when encoding arrays and objects. Exception is thrown when the maximum is exceeded. Set to false to have no limit.

This library is copyright 2013 - 2015 to Riikka Kalliomäki.

See LICENSE for license and copying information.