Allows reflection of object attributes, including inherited and non-public ones
6.3k
Stars
3
Forks
1
Open issues
5
Contributors
AI Analysis
This is a PHP utility library that enables deep reflection of object properties, including private, protected, and inherited attributes that are normally inaccessible through standard PHP reflection. It is purpose-built for testing frameworks, debugging tools, and development utilities that need introspection capabilities beyond PHP's native reflection API—primarily benefiting test harness developers and library authors, not general application developers.
Inferred from signals mentioned in the README (tests, CI, type safety) — not a review of the actual code.
AI's overall editorial judgment — not an average of the bars above, can weigh other factors too.
PHP utility library for reflecting private and inherited object properties, a quiet backbone of PHPUnit
sebastian/object-reflector is a small, focused PHP library that exposes all attributes of an object — including private, protected, and inherited ones — beyond what PHP's native ReflectionClass conveniently surfaces. It was built by Sebastian Bergmann primarily as an internal dependency of PHPUnit and related testing infrastructure. Its high download count on Packagist is almost entirely driven by PHPUnit's massive ecosystem adoption rather than direct end-user choice. It matters because PHPUnit's diff, export, and comparison subsystems depend on it to accurately inspect objects during test assertions.
Created in March 2017 by Sebastian Bergmann as part of a broader decomposition of PHPUnit's internal utilities into standalone, versioned Composer packages. It has followed PHPUnit's versioning cadence closely ever since.
Star count of 6,284 with only 3 forks is a classic indirect-adoption signature: developers star it while exploring PHPUnit's dependency tree, not because they adopt it independently. Actual download growth tracks PHPUnit adoption globally. The 2 stars gained in the last 7 days confirm it is not a trending discovery project — growth is slow and steady, driven entirely by PHPUnit's installed base.
Indirectly, this library is one of the most widely deployed PHP packages in existence — it is a transitive dependency of PHPUnit, which has hundreds of millions of Composer installs. Direct intentional adoption by end-users outside the PHPUnit ecosystem is not documented in the README and appears minimal, but indirect production usage is extremely broad.
Likely a minimal single-class library (ObjectReflector) that iterates over an object's class hierarchy using PHP's native ReflectionClass, collecting properties at each level to handle shadowed and overridden attributes. Appears to be intentionally scoped to one responsibility.
Codecov badge is present in the README, suggesting automated coverage tracking is active. Exact coverage percentage is not stated in the README excerpt, but CI badge indicates tests run on every push.
Last push was 2026-06-23, just 4 days before the evaluation date — the project is actively maintained. Maintenance cadence appears to follow PHPUnit release cycles, with updates likely triggered by PHP version support changes or PHPUnit compatibility bumps rather than new features.
ADOPT IF: you are building testing tooling, serialization, or debugging utilities in PHP that need to reliably enumerate all object properties across inheritance hierarchies without writing your own ReflectionClass recursion. AVOID IF: you need to access or mutate object properties at runtime in production application code — this is not designed as a general-purpose property accessor and carries the risks of coupling to internal object state. MONITOR IF: you maintain a PHP library that already vendors this as a transitive PHPUnit dependency and want to track whether future PHP versions or PHPUnit major versions alter its API.
Independent dimensions
Mainstream potential
2/10
Technical importance
5/10
Adoption evidence
8/10
- Extreme dependency concentration: nearly all real-world usage flows through PHPUnit, so any breaking change in PHPUnit's dependency strategy would instantly affect this package's relevance.
- PHP version evolution may reduce the need for this abstraction if future PHP releases add better native APIs for inherited private property introspection.
- The library's minimal scope means it will rarely receive feature development — developers who need richer reflection behavior may need to supplement or replace it.
- Low fork count (3) suggests minimal community involvement outside the maintainer; bus-factor is effectively 1.
- Semantic versioning changes in major releases (e.g., v1 to v2 to v3) have historically broken compatibility for projects pinning older PHPUnit versions, requiring multi-version constraint management.
This library will continue to exist as a stable, low-churn infrastructure component as long as PHPUnit depends on it. No meaningful independent adoption growth is expected — it will remain a well-maintained internal utility.
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Information
- Language
- PHP
- License
- BSD-3-Clause
- Last updated
- 1w ago
- Created
- 114mo ago
- Analyzed with
- anthropic/claude-haiku-4-5
Stars over time
Contributors over time
Top 100 contributors only — repos with more will plateau at 100.
Open issues
Open pull requests
No open pull requests.
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The built-in ReflectionClass requires manual recursion through parent classes to collect inherited private properties; this library wraps that complexity into a single call. Not really a competitor — more of a convenience layer over it.
ReflectionCommon focuses on PHP element reflection for documentation and static analysis purposes. Different use case — that library models code structure; this one inspects live object state at runtime.
A sibling package in the same ecosystem. object-enumerator traverses object graphs to enumerate all objects; object-reflector is used as a building block within that process to extract properties.
Symfony's property-access component reads and writes object properties via a path-based API, often with getter/setter awareness. Serves a different use case (data access) rather than complete attribute introspection for inspection/comparison.
Some proxy-based tools need deep object introspection, but they operate at the proxy generation level. Not a direct alternative — this library is narrower and lighter.
