Awesome

Dead code detector for PHP

PHPStan extension to find unused PHP code in your project with ease!

Summary:

✅ PHPStan extension
♻️ Dead cycles detection
🔗 Transitive dead method detection
🧹 Automatic removal of unused code
📚 Popular libraries support
✨ Customizable entrypoints

Installation:

composer require --dev shipmonk/dead-code-detector

Use official extension-installer or just load the rules:

includes:
    - vendor/shipmonk/dead-code-detector/rules.neon

Supported libraries

Any overridden method that originates in vendor is not reported as dead
We also support many magic calls in following libraries:

Symfony:

constructor calls for DIC services!
- phpstan/phpstan-symfony with containerXmlPath must be used
#[AsEventListener] attribute
#[AsController] attribute
#[AsCommand] attribute
#[Required] attribute
#[Route] attributes
onKernelResponse, onKernelRequest, etc

Doctrine:

#[AsEntityListener] attribute
Doctrine\ORM\Events::* events
Doctrine\Common\EventSubscriber methods
lifecycle event attributes #[PreFlush], #[PostLoad], ...

PHPUnit:

data provider methods
testXxx methods
annotations like @test, @before, @afterClass etc
attributes like #[Test], #[Before], #[AfterClass] etc

PHPStan:

constructor calls for DIC services (rules, extensions, ...)

Nette:

handleXxx, renderXxx, actionXxx, injectXxx, createComponentXxx
SmartObject magic calls for @property annotations

All those libraries are autoenabled when found within your composer dependencies. If you want to force enable/disable some of them, you can:

# phpstan.neon.dist
parameters:
    shipmonkDeadCode:
        entrypoints:
            phpunit:
                enabled: true

Customization:

If your application does some magic calls unknown to this library, you can implement your own entrypoint provider.
Just tag it with shipmonk.deadCode.entrypointProvider and implement ShipMonk\PHPStan\DeadCode\Provider\MethodEntrypointProvider
You can simplify your implementation by extending ShipMonk\PHPStan\DeadCode\Provider\SimpleMethodEntrypointProvider

# phpstan.neon.dist
services:
    -
        class: App\ApiOutputEntrypointProvider
        tags:
            - shipmonk.deadCode.entrypointProvider


use ReflectionMethod;
use ShipMonk\PHPStan\DeadCode\Provider\SimpleMethodEntrypointProvider;

class ApiOutputEntrypointProvider extends SimpleMethodEntrypointProvider
{

    public function isEntrypointMethod(ReflectionMethod $method): bool
    {
        return $method->getDeclaringClass()->implementsInterface(ApiOutput::class));
    }
}

Dead cycles & transitively dead methods

This library automatically detects dead cycles and transitively dead methods (methods that are only called from dead methods)
By default, it reports only the first dead method in the subtree and the rest as a tip:

 ------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Line   src/App/Facade/UserFacade.php
 ------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  26     Unused App\Facade\UserFacade::updateUserAddress
         🪪  shipmonk.deadMethod
         💡 Thus App\Entity\User::updateAddress is transitively also unused
         💡 Thus App\Entity\Address::setPostalCode is transitively also unused
         💡 Thus App\Entity\Address::setCountry is transitively also unused
         💡 Thus App\Entity\Address::setStreet is transitively also unused
         💡 Thus App\Entity\Address::setZip is transitively also unused
 ------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you want to report all dead methods individually, you can enable it in your phpstan.neon.dist:

parameters:
    shipmonkDeadCode:
        reportTransitivelyDeadMethodAsSeparateError: true

Automatic removal of dead code

If you are sure that the reported methods are dead, you can automatically remove them by running PHPStan with removeDeadCode error format:

vendor/bin/phpstan analyse --error-format removeDeadCode

class UserFacade
{
-    public function deadMethod(): void
-    {
-    }
}

Calls over unknown types

In order to prevent false positives, we support even calls over unknown types (e.g. $unknown->method()) by marking all methods named method as used
- Such behaviour might not be desired for strictly typed codebases, because e.g. single new $unknown() will mark all constructors as used
- Thus, you can disable this feature in your phpstan.neon.dist:

parameters:
    shipmonkDeadCode:
        trackCallsOnMixed: false

If you want to check how many of those cases are present in your codebase, you can run PHPStan analysis with -vvv and you will see some diagnostics:

Found 2 methods called over unknown type:
 • setCountry, for example in App\Entity\User::updateAddress
 • setStreet, for example in App\Entity\User::updateAddress

Comparison with tomasvotruba/unused-public

You can see detailed comparison PR
Basically, their analysis is less precise and less flexible. Mainly:
- It cannot detect dead constructors
- It does not properly detect calls within inheritance hierarchy
- It does not offer any custom adjustments of used methods
- It has almost no built-it library extensions
- It ignores trait methods
- Is lacks many minor features like class-string calls, dynamic method calls, array callbacks, nullsafe call chains etc
- It cannot detect dead cycles nor transitively dead methods
- It has no built-in dead code removal

Limitations:

Methods of anonymous classes are never reported as dead (PHPStan limitation)
Abstract trait methods are never reported as dead
Most magic methods (e.g. __get, __set etc) are never reported as dead
- Only supported are: __construct, __clone

Future scope:

Dead class constant detection
Dead class property detection
Dead class detection

Contributing

Check your code by composer check
Autofix coding-style by composer fix:cs
All functionality must be tested

Supported PHP versions

PHP 7.4 - 8.3