Inspecting the AST

mago ast prints either the abstract syntax tree or the token stream for a single PHP file. Useful for debugging a tricky parse, understanding how Mago sees a piece of syntax, or feeding the output to another tool that wants Mago's parser. It is not part of the regular formatter / linter / analyzer / guard workflow; treat it as a debug command, alongside list-files and friends.

Tree view

Given example.php:

<?php

echo 'Hello, World!';

mago ast example.php

Program
├── Statement
│ └── OpeningTag
│ └── FullOpeningTag
└── Statement
 └── Echo
 ├── Keyword
 ├── Expression
 │ └── Literal
 │ └── LiteralString "Hello, World!"
 └── Terminator ;

Token view

--tokens prints the lexer's token stream instead. Useful for debugging low-level syntax issues.

mago ast example.php --tokens

 Kind                      Value                                              Span
 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 OpenTag                   "<?php"                                            [0..5]
 Whitespace                "\n\n"                                             [7..7]
 Echo                      "echo"                                             [7..11]
 Whitespace                " "                                                [12..12]
 LiteralString             "'Hello, World!'"                                  [12..27]
 Semicolon                 ";"                                                [27..28]
 Whitespace                "\n"                                               [29..29]

JSON output

--json switches either view to pretty-printed JSON. Combine with --tokens for a token-stream JSON, or alone for the full AST.

mago ast example.php --json

{
    "error": null,
    "program": {
        "file_id": 9370985751100973094,
        "source_text": "<?php\n\necho 'Hello, World!';\n",
        "statements": { "nodes": [] },
        "trivia": { "nodes": [] }
    }
}

Reference

Usage: mago ast [OPTIONS] <FILE>

Argument	Description
`<FILE>`	The PHP file to inspect. Required.

Flag	Description
`--tokens`	Print the lexer's token stream instead of the parsed AST.
`--json`	Print the output (AST or token stream) as pretty-printed JSON.
`--names`	Run the name resolver on the parsed AST and print fully qualified names for every symbol. Cannot be combined with `--tokens`.
`-h`, `--help`	Print help and exit.

Global flags must come before ast. See the CLI overview for the full list.

Driving the parser from Rust

If you are building a tool in Rust and need a fast PHP parser, you can use Mago's crates directly:

mago-syntax: the lexer, parser, AST node definitions, and helpers for walking the tree.
mago-names: name resolution, turning a local class name into its fully qualified form.