PhpGenerator 3.4: body and soul

It can also copy the bodies of methods and functions, i.e. their code.

Let's remember a way to create a class model from an existing class:

use Nette\PhpGenerator\ClassType;

$class = ClassType::from(Nette\Application\UI\Control::class);
echo $class;

The rendered class is fairly accurate copy of the original class, including phpDoc comments, etc. It differs from the original in only two ways:

1. it omits traits
2. method's body is missing

The omission of traits is due to insufficient abilities of PHP class reflection, for which reason it is very complicated to find out to which traits the properties and methods belong to. However, support may be added in a future release.

However, what version 3.4 brought is the ability to load classes and functions including code in their bodies. This is done as follows:

$class = ClassType::withBodiesFrom(Nette\Application\UI\Control::class);

$function = Nette\PhpGenerator\GlobalFunction::withBodyFrom('dump');

This functionality uses the library nikic/php-parser, which needs to be installed:

composer require nikic/php-parser