PHPantom: A Fast PHP Language Server Built in Rust

PHPantom is a PHP Language Server Protocol (LSP) implementation written in Rust, built around fast startup and low memory use. On a project with 21,000 PHP files and 1.5 million lines of code, it is ready in under a second:

It communicates over stdin/stdout using the standard LSP protocol and works with any LSP-supporting editor. JetBrains phpstorm-stubs are bundled directly into the binary, so there is no runtime download or cache to manage.

#Type Intelligence

PHPantom resolves types across generics, PHPStan annotations, conditional return types, and array/object shapes. It handles @template and @template-covariant tags, so a generic collection class produces correctly-typed completions at each call site:

/**
 * @template T
 */
class Collection
{
    /** @var T[] */
    private array $items = [];
 
    /**
     * @param T $item
     */
    public function add(mixed $item): void
    {
        $this->items[] = $item;
    }
 
    /**
     * @return T|null
     */
    public function first(): mixed
    {
        return $this->items[0] ?? null;
    }
}
 
/** @var Collection<User> $users */
$users = new Collection();
$users->add(new User());
$user = $users->first(); // inferred as User|null

Laravel Eloquent is supported without any external plugin — relationships, accessors, and model properties are resolved for completions and go-to-definition.

#Refactoring

PHPantom includes code actions for renaming symbols across the workspace and changing method visibility. The README's feature comparison table lists additional refactoring actions — extract method/function, extract/inline variable, constructor parameter promotion, and implement interface methods — though support may vary by editor and PHP version.

It also detects @deprecated symbols and flags them inline, and includes an expression simplification code action.

#Editor Setup

Pre-built binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows are available from the releases page. Place the binary on your PATH, then configure your editor.

Neovim — add a server entry in your LSP config pointing to the binary, with filetypes = { "php" } and root dir markers of composer.json or .git.

VS Code — install a generic LSP client extension, download the binary, and configure the binary path with language ID php.

Zed — an extension is included in the zed-extension/ directory. It auto-downloads the correct binary; set phpantom_lsp on PATH to use a local build instead.

PHPStorm — install the LSP4IJ plugin, create a new language server entry with the binary path, and map it to PHP file types.

#Project Configuration

PHPantom reads composer.json automatically for autoload paths. A .phpantom.toml file supports additional overrides:

[project]
php_version = "8.3"
 
[diagnostics]
unused_variables = true
deprecated_symbols = true
 
[indexing]
strategy = "composer" # or "self" or "none"

Generate a default config file with:

phpantom_lsp --init

You can find the project at AJenbo/phpantom_lsp on GitHub.