Php Attribute Reader Laravel Package

title: Introduction weight: 1

PHP 8.0 introduced attributes, a way to add structured metadata to classes, methods, properties, constants, parameters, and functions. The idea is great, but the reflection API to read them is verbose.

Imagine you have a controller with a Route attribute:

#[Route('/my-controller')]
class MyController
{
    // ...
}

Getting that attribute instance using native PHP requires this:

$reflection = new ReflectionClass(MyController::class);
$attributes = $reflection->getAttributes(Route::class, ReflectionAttribute::IS_INSTANCEOF);

if (count($attributes) > 0) {
    $route = $attributes[0]->newInstance();
}

With this package, it becomes a single call:

use Spatie\Attributes\Attributes;

$route = Attributes::get(MyController::class, Route::class);

The package handles instantiation, IS_INSTANCEOF matching, and returns null for missing targets instead of throwing exceptions.

It works on all attribute targets: classes, methods, properties, constants, parameters, and functions. It supports repeatable attributes and can discover all usages of an attribute across an entire class.

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