Php Smart Search/replace Functionality

It is much easier than using regex.

Installation:

composer require imanghafoori/php-search-replace

Usage:

1- Lets say you want to remove double semi-colon occurances like these:

$user = 1;;
$user = 2; ;
$user = 3;
;

Then you can define a pattern like this:

$pattern = [';;' => ['replace' => ';']];

This will catch all the 3 cases above since the neutral php whitespaces are ignored while searching.

---

Placeholders:

Here is a copmerehensive list of placeholders you can use:

• <var> or <variable>: for variables like: $user
• <str> or <string>: for hard coded strings: 'hello' or "hello"
• <class_ref>: for class references: \App\User::where(... , User::where
• <full_class_ref>: only for full references: \App\User::
• <until>: to capture all the code until you reach a certain character.
• <comment>: for commands (does not capture doc-blocks)
• <doc_block>: for doc-blocks
• <statement>: to capture a whole php statement.
• "<name:nam1,nam2>" or <name>: for method or function names. ->where or ::where
• <white_space>: for whitespace blocks
• <not_whitespace>: for non-whitespace
• <bool> or '<boolean>': for true or false (acts case-insensetive)
• <number>: for numeric values
• <cast>: for type-casts like: (array) $a;
• <int> or <integer>: for integer values
• <visibility>: for public, protected, private
• <float>: for floating point number
• "<global_func_call:func1,func2>": to detect global function calls.
• <in_between>: to capture code within a pair of {...} or (...) or [...]
• <any>: captures any token.
• You can also define your own keywords if needed!

You just define a class for your new keyword and append the class path to the end of Finder::$keywords[] = MyKeyword::class property. Just like the default keywords.

Example:

lets say you want to remove the optional comma from arrays:

$a = [
   '1',
   '2',
];
$b = ['1','2',];

Then you can define a pattern like this:

$pattern = [',<whitespace>?]' => ['replace' => '"<1>"]']];

Here the <whitespace>? mean an optional whitespace may reside there, and the "<1>" means the value that matches the first placeholder should be put there.