Phpstan Strict Rules Laravel Package

Getting Started

Install the package via Composer to add strict PHPStan rules to your project:

composer require --dev thecodingmachine/phpstan-strict-rules

Then include the ruleset in your phpstan.neon:

includes:
    - vendor/thecodingmachine/phpstan-strict-rules/extension.neon

The primary use case is catching common anti-patterns early — e.g., strict equality checks (=== vs ==), enforcing @phpstan-template where generic types are used, or requiring type declarations in docblocks for arrays/iterables.

Implementation Patterns

• Integrate with your CI pipeline (e.g., GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) to enforce rules on every pull request.
• Gradually adopt rules by starting with level: 5 (recommended for most projects), then incrementally increase strictness (level: 6, level: 7) over time.
• Combine with phpstan-exceptional-rules for enhanced error handling enforcement.
• Use ignoreErrors selectively in phpstan.neon for legacy code where full compliance is infeasible — but track them via whitelist or ignore-by-regexp for future cleanup.

Gotchas and Tips

• Rules are opinionated and may conflict with PSR-12 formatting in edge cases (e.g., strict comparison multiline expressions); use --clear-cache after config changes to avoid stale analysis.
• Some rules require PHP 7.4+ (e.g., typed properties, variadic expansion enhancements) — ensure your PHP runtime and phpstan.phpStanVersion match.
• The package is unmaintained (last release: 2021-11-10); consider migrating to phpstan/phpstan-strict-rules (the official fork), which supersedes this and is actively maintained.
• To debug a specific rule failure, run vendor/bin/phpstan analyse -vvv and check the rule class name in the output (e.g., Thematic\StrictComparisonRule) for precise troubleshooting.