Reflection Laravel Package

Getting Started

The illuminate/reflection package provides a higher-level, developer-friendly API for PHP's reflection capabilities—designed specifically to work seamlessly with Laravel’s container, conventions, and coding patterns. To begin, install it via Composer (composer require illuminate/reflection) and import the main facade or class (Illuminate\Support\Reflector). The first use case is often resolving class dependencies in a standardized way—e.g., checking if a class is instantiable, resolving its constructor dependencies, or retrieving parameter types with Laravel-aware defaults (like resolving Request $request from the container). Start by reading Reflector::getConstructor() and Reflector::resolvable().

Implementation Patterns

Developers commonly use Reflector to:

• Safely instantiate classes via Reflector::make() or Reflector::resolve(), especially when building dynamic controllers, middleware, or command handlers.
• Inspect and process service provider bindings—e.g., checking whether a service is concrete or abstract using Reflector::isConcrete().
• Integrate with Laravel’s service container, like resolving contextual bindings by inspecting class/method signatures and their @inject or #[Inject] attributes (via Reflector::getMethodParameters()).
• Enable custom reflection utilities, such as generating API documentation from controller method signatures, or building command discovery tools that respect Laravel’s naming conventions.

Example workflow: Discovering all classes in a namespace, filtering for those implementing a specific interface, and resolving only those that are instantiable using Reflector::canBeInstantiated().

Gotchas and Tips

• ❗ Not a replacement for native Reflection* classes—it wraps them with Laravel-specific logic. For deep inspection (e.g., docblocks, custom attributes), fall back to PHP’s ReflectionClass where Reflector is too high-level.
• ⚠️ Reflector::make() and resolve() do not use the container directly—you must pass the container manually (e.g., Reflector::make($container, $class)) or use Container::make() unless using the helper proxies.
• 💡 To extend Reflector, you can subclass it or register custom logic in your service providers, but the class is final in practice—rely on its stable API.
• 🔍 If getting “class not found” or “abstract class” errors, verify paths in composer.json (PSR-4 autoloading) and use Reflector::canBeInstantiated($class) before instantiation.
• 🧪 Debug tip: Use Reflector::getParameters() with withDefaults: true to see how Laravel infers defaults from the container (e.g., string $env = 'local' → 'local' if bound).