phpDocumentor

What is phpDocumentor?

phpDocumentor is an application that is capable of analyzing your PHP source code and DocBlock comments to generate a complete set of API Documentation.

Inspired by phpDocumentor 1 and JavaDoc, it continues to innovate and is up to date with the latest technologies and PHP language features.

phpDocumentor v3 (Stable)

v3 is the latest stable release.

Documentation

For more detailed information, you can check our online documentation at https://docs.phpdoc.org/.

Features

phpDocumentor supports the following:

PHP 7.0+ compatible, full support for Namespaces, Closures and more are provided.
Docblock over types, docblocks can be more explicit about types not all formats are supported by native php.
Shows any tag, some tags add additional functionality to phpDocumentor (such as @link).
Low memory usage, peak memory usage for small projects is less than 20MB, medium projects 40MB, and large frameworks 100MB.
Incremental parsing, if you kept the Structure file from a previous run, you get an additional performance boost of up to 80% on top of the mentioned processing speed increase above.
Easy template building, if you want to make a branding you only have to call 1 task and edit 3 files.
Two-step process, phpDocumentor first generates a cache with your application structure before creating the output. If you'd like you can use that to power your own tools or formatters!
Generics support, with more static analysis in php types have become more complex. phpDocumentor understand these types. And will render them as first class types.

Installation

PhpDocumentor requires PHP 7.4 or higher to run. However, code of earlier PHP versions can be analyzed.

All templates provided with phpDocumentor have support for Class diagrams based on the read code base. This will require the application Graphviz to be installed on the machine running phpDocumentor. Rendering the class diagrams using Graphviz is optional, and warnings about missing Graphviz can be ignored. However, your documentation will contain some dead links in this case. Class diagram will be created with option --setting=graphs.enabled=true.

There are 4 ways to install phpDocumentor:

Using phive (recommended)
Using the PHAR (manual install)
Via Docker
Via Composer

Using Phive

$ phive install --force-accept-unsigned phpDocumentor

For more information about phive have a look at their website. Now you have phpDocumentor installed, it can be executed like this:

php tools/phpDocumentor

Using the PHAR

Download the phar file from https://github.com/phpDocumentor/phpDocumentor/releases
You can execute the phar like this: php phpDocumentor.phar

Via Docker

$ docker pull phpdoc/phpdoc
$ docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/data phpdoc/phpdoc

Via Composer (not recommended)

But wait? What about composer?

Ah, you discovered our secret. There is a phpdocumentor composer package that you can use to install phpDocumentor.

However: phpDocumentor is a complex application, and its libraries are used in countless other libraries and applications (2 of our libraries have more than 150 million downloads each); and this means that the chances for a conflict between one of our dependencies and yours is high. And when I say high, it is really high.

So, because of the above: we do not endorse nor actively support installing phpDocumentor using Composer.

PEAR

Starting from phpDocumentor v3 we decided to drop PEAR support due to declining use.

How to use phpDocumentor?

The easiest way to run phpDocumentor is by running the following command:

$ phpdoc run -d <SOURCE_DIRECTORY> -t <TARGET_DIRECTORY>

This command will parse the source code provided using the -d argument and output it to the folder indicated by the -t argument.

phpDocumentor supports a whole range of options to configure the output of your documentation. You can execute the following command, or check our website, for a more detailed listing of available command-line options.

$ phpdoc run -h

Configuration file(s)

phpDocumentor also supports the use of configuration files (named phpdoc.xml or phpdoc.dist.xml by default). Please consult the documentation to see the format and supported options.

Nightly builds

PhpDocumentor doesn't have nightly releases. However, during each pipeline a phar artifact is built. If you want to test the bleeding edge version of phpDocumentor, have a look in the actions section of this repository. Each successful QA workflow has an Artifacts section at the bottom with the phar artifact built.