Update/manipulate a PHP file with new code

Question

I have a configuration file which, amongst other things, defines a whole bunch of values and callables. I'm writing a development tool which needs to update some of the definitions in this file. I can't think of a way to do this which isn't just reading the file and writing my string at a certain point defined by a comment within the file.

Imagine my file looks like this:

<?php

$things = [
    'a_thing' => 'some value',
    'callable_thing' => function() {
        return SomeClass();
    }
    // END THINGS
];

I'd like to insert a new array key into this array (the value of which might be any valid option), in alphabetical order. Is this possible, using Reflection maybe? Second best would be to place a specially formatted comment (i.e the "// END THINGS" comment) as a "target" and insert before it, but I can't help but feel that's pretty hacky, and doesn't satisfy the alphabetical requirement.

I'm aware of the implications of self-mutating code. This is a developer tool and would only be used locally to automate common file->create->update tasks when setting up new projects.

Barmar · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-23 22:46:03Z

1

You could use the var_export() function to print the value of a variable in a way that can be evaluated. So you would load the file with include($filename);, and modify the contents of $things. Then you can update the file with:

$contents = '$things = ' . var_export($things, true) . ';';
file_put_contents($filename, $contents);

answered Jan 23, 2017 at 22:46

Barmar

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3 Comments

HelloPablo Over a year ago

Thanks! Close, but I think it's a non-starter. I need to be able to maintain the code within the function closures. A quick test and it returns Closure::__set_state(array()) for the callable_thing. I think I might need to do some nasty regex'ing to achieve this :(

Barmar Over a year ago

I didn't even notice that you had a function in there. Could you take the functions out of the array, and define them as named functions, and then put function names in the array?

HelloPablo Over a year ago

Sadly not. I went with using the comment "marker" and prepending the text before it. Doesn't tick all the boxes, but gets the job done.

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