bashe 0.2.0

A Tree-sitter based PHP parser (Rust + PyO3)

Bashe

Bashe (巴蛇) is a fast, tree-sitter based PHP parser for Python, powered by Rust + PyO3. It parses PHP source into a clean, structured AST with full PHP 7/8 support — and runs 5× faster than phply.

Features

• Parses PHP into a structured AST via tree-sitter
• Full PHP 7 support: scalar types, return type declarations, null coalescing (??), spaceship operator (<=>)
• Full PHP 8 support: constructor property promotion, named arguments, nullsafe operator (?->), match expressions, union types
• Magic constants (__FILE__, __DIR__, __NAMESPACE__, __FUNCTION__, etc.) resolved during parsing
• Built on Rust/PyO3 — tree-sitter parsing and AST translation happen entirely in native code
• Known limitation: curly-brace string offset ($str{0}) is not supported; this syntax was deprecated in PHP 7.4 and removed in PHP 8.0. Use bracket offset ($str[0]) instead

Installation

Python 3.10+ is supported.

pip install bashe

Quick Start

from bashe import Bashe

parser = Bashe()
ast = parser.parse('<?php echo "hello, world!"; ?>')
print(ast)

# Magic constants are resolved automatically
nodes = parser.parse(
    '<?php namespace Foo; class Bar { function baz() { echo __METHOD__; } } ?>',
    filename="/path/to/file.php",
)

Performance

Bashe is approximately 5× faster than phply's pure-Python parser.

Parser	Time (10k)	Ratio
bashe	0.75s	1.00×
phply	3.64s	4.85×

Benchmark: parsing bench.php (multi-line PHP with includes, evals, function definitions) 10,000 times on CPython 3.13.

Migrating from phply

Bashe is a drop-in replacement for phply:

# Before (phply)
from phply.phpparse import make_parser
parser = make_parser()
ast = parser.parse(code)

# After (bashe)
from bashe import Bashe
parser = Bashe()
ast = parser.parse(code)

Bashe uses its own fast native AST types (Variable, FunctionCall, Function, Class, etc.) — no dependency on phply.

Development

# Install dependencies and dev tools
uv sync --dev

# Run tests
uv run pytest

License

MIT — see LICENSE.