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Find Unused Public Elements in Your Code

<br> <div align="center"> <img src="/docs/unused_public.jpg" style="width: 10em"> </div> <br>

It's easy to find unused private class elements, because they're not used in the class itself. But what about public methods/properties/constants?

 final class Book
 {
     public function getTitle(): string
     {
         // ...
     }

-    public function getSubtitle(): string
-    {
-        // ...
-    }
}

How can we detect unused public element?

That's exactly what this package does.

<br>

This technique is very useful for private projects and to detect accidentally used public modifier that should be changed to private as called locally only.

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Install

composer require tomasvotruba/unused-public --dev

The package is available for PHP 7.2+ version.

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Usage

With PHPStan extension installer, everything is ready to run.

Enable each item on their own with simple configuration:

# phpstan.neon
parameters:
    unused_public:
        methods: true
        properties: true
        constants: true
<br>

Do you have hundreds of reported public method? You don't have time to check them all, but want to handle them gradually?

Set maximum allowed % configuration instead:

# phpstan.neon
parameters:
    unused_public:
        methods: 2.5

This means maximum 2.5 % of all public methods is allowed as unused:

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Do you want to check local-only method calls that should not be removed, but be turned into private/protected instead?

# phpstan.neon
parameters:
    unused_public:
        local_methods: true
<br>

Exclude methods called in templates

Some methods are used only in TWIG or Blade templates, and could be reported false positively as unused.

{{ book.getTitle() }}

How can we exclude them? Add your TWIG or Blade template directories in config to exclude methods names:

# phpstan.neon
parameters:
    unused_public:
        template_paths:
            - templates
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Known Limitations

In some cases, the rules report false positives:

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Skip Public-Only Methods

Open-source vendors design public API to be used by projects. Is element reported as unused, but it's actually designed to be used public?

Mark the class or element with @api annotation to skip it:

final class Book
{
    /**
     * @api
     */
    public function getName()
    {
        return $this->name;
    }
}