Pathetic

Pathetic is a simple PHP library consisting just of couple of classes. It is aimed to help with platform-independent path work, so you can run the same code, fnmatch checks and comparisons regardless of specific machine your project is running on.

And yes, it is influenced by java.nio.Path.

Installation

composer require ama-team/pathetic

Usage

You start with classic string and Path::parse method:

use AmaTeam\Pathetic\Path;

$path = Path::parse('beverages/soda');
$path = Path::parse('file://beverages/soda');
$path = Path::parse('c:\\beverages\\soda', Path::PLATFORM_WINDOWS);
$path = Path::parse('c:/beverages/soda', Path::PLATFORM_WINDOWS);
$path = Path::parse('custom-scheme://c:/beverages/soda', Path::PLATFORM_WINDOWS);

Second argument should be used only when you operate with paths for specific platform - by default, it is calculated automatically.

After you've obtained path instance, you can simply convert it to string to get consistent-delimiter representation:

$path = Path::parse('file://beverages\\soda');
echo (string) $path; // file://beverages/soda

This will save you from awkward moments when you append directory/file to windows path and then try to compare it with path received from OS (which will contain directory\file instead), also, it makes it pretty easy to use fnmatch glob patterns platform-independently.

If you ever to need platform-consistent representation, you may use toPlatformString() method:

echo $path->toPlatformString(); // file://beverages\\soda

Except for those basic operations, Pathetic allows basic path normalization, path concatenation (resolution), path relativization and path comparison.

$path = Path::parse('/node/directory//./../leaf');
echo (string) $path; # /node/directory//./../leaf
echo $path->normalize(); # /node/leaf
$path->isAbsolute(); # true

$node = Path::parse('/node');
$leaf = Path::parse('leaf');
$other = $node->resolve($leaf); # /node/leaf
$path->isChildOf($node); # true
$path->isSiblingOf($other); # true
$path->equals($other); # true
echo (string) $path->getParent(); # /node
echo (string) $node->relativize($path); # leaf
foreach ($path->iterator() as $entry) {
    echo (string) $entry;
    # /
    # /node
    # /node/leaf
}

At last, there are some helper methods you may want to use:

$path = Path::parse('file://c:/node/directory', Path::PLATFORM_WINDOWS);
$path = $path->withoutScheme()->withRoot('d:');
echo $path->getRoot(); # d:
echo $path->getScheme(); # null
echo $path->getSeparator(); # \ - because of windows platform

Major notes

All path operations are non-destructive, and all path instances are immutable - whenever #normalize(), #relativize() or #withRoot() are called, new object is created instead of modifying old one.

There is edge case with current directory - while one may expect that normalized relative path of current directory will render down to dot ('.'), this won't happen - it will be rendered to empty string (''). However, while you don't call for normalization, your path will stay as-is.

Windows has two types of absolute paths - with and without drive letter, (\Users and C:\Users, for example). Both types are treated as absolute by Pathetic - it's up to end user to determine if he or she has to specify drive letter to not to inherit it from current working directory. This is, of course, a drawback, but unless that absolute path is inherited from user input - which should be intentional thing - that shouldn't happen.

Dev branch shield cellar