Thread.php

Note from the developer:

This package is still in active development, and is NOT fully tested or ready for production use. This release is an alpha release (at best) and you can expect some kind of breaking change before a full v1 release.

Also, I renamed the package from “Twine” to “Thread”, so I might have missed a namespace declaration somewhere. Since this is an alpha version right now, I will be continuing testing and development to improve the library and provide new features.

If you have any suggestions for features, please feel free to open an issue or a pull request.

Thanks,

Garrett

Check out the source code on GitHub.

Thread: a wrapper class for string manipulation in PHP. Never slog through the php string function docs again!

I’ve worked with PHP for… a little over 10 years now, and I’ve always hated the existing string functions. They are certainly plentiful, and if you know your regex, you can do a lot with them, but they are not very intuitive, and the naming conventions are… bad.

Laravel’s String helper classes are a gigantic leap in the right direction (IMO), but it’s wrapped in the Laravel framework, and while you can use it outside of Laravel, I’d rather see a dedicated third party library that is framework-agnostic.

Thread is a framework-agnostic, static-method focused wrapper class for easily manipulating strings in PHP. No more calling random functions with random arguments and hoping for the best. Instead, create a new Thread object, and manipulate the underlying string by chaining methods together in an elegant and fluent way.

Why Thread?

Originally, I wanted to call this package “Thread”, but while working on an alpha version, I stumbled across the PHLAK/Thread package, which accomplishes the exact same thing I was trying to do, and does it well.

So, instead of a play on words from my farming origins (Thread being a synonym for string, and a tool we used for everything on the farm), I decided to go with a play on words from my mother’s hobby of sewing and quilting. So, “string” from computer science, meet “thread” from fiber arts.

Not to be confused with “thread” as in the singular process that runs on a CPU… that’s a different thing entirely.

Plus, ‘string’ is a reserved word in PHP, so I couldn’t use that anyway.

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require gtmassey/thread

Usage

Getting started

The package is a simple PHP package, so you can use it in any PHP project. Simply add it to your use statements, and you’re ready to go.

use Gtmassey\Thread\Thread;

If you are using Laravel, the ThreadServiceProvider will automatically register the Thread facade for you. You can use the facade in your code like this:

use Thread;

Now you can use the Thread::make() method to create a new Thread object from a string or an array.

If you are using Symfony, you can use the Thread class directly, or you can use the ThreadFacade class.

If you aren’t using any of these frameworks, don’t worry. You can just include the Thread class in your code and use it directly without any issues.

Creating a Thread object

You can use the new keyword to create a new Thread object, the constructor accepts a string or null as an argument. If null, the default is an empty string "".

$string = new Thread('Hello world!');
echo($string->toString());
// "Hello world!"

$emptyString = new Thread();
echo($emptyString->toString());
// ""

You can also use the static make(), of(), and from() methods to create a new Thread object from either a string or an array. Each of the static construction methods accepts either a string OR an array as an argument.

If you use an array as the argument for the static construction methods, the array will be imploded with a space as the separator always. You can use StringableTrait methods to then manipulate the string to your liking.

$string = Thread::make('a b c');
//OR
$string = Thread::make(['a', 'b', 'c']);
echo($string->toString());
// "Hello world!"

$string = Thread::of('a b c');
//OR
$string = Thread::of(['a', 'b', 'c']);
echo($string->toString());
// "a b c"

$string = Thread::from('a b c');
//OR
$string = Thread::from(['a', 'b', 'c']);
echo($string->toString());
// "a b c"

Manipulating strings

Thread comes with several methods for manipulating strings. Methods either return the newly mutated Thread object, a new Thread object, or a specific value (like the integer length of a string). All methods that return a Thread instance are chain-able.

Example of chaining methods to manipulate a string:

//"Foo bar"
$string = Thread::from('Foo bar');

//fBrBz
$string->toPascalCase()
       ->append(' baz')
       ->toTitleCase()
       ->stripChar('a')
       ->lcFirst()
       ->stripWhitespace()
       ->stripChar('o');

echo($string); //fBrBz

//example: manipulating phone number string:
$phoneNumber = Thread::from('+1 (123) 456-7890 x123');
$phone = $phoneNumber->splitOn('x')[0];
//"+1 (123) 456-7890 "
$extension = $phoneNumber->splitOn('x')[1];
//"123"
$phone->stripNonNumeric()->stripWhitespace()->toString();
//"11234567890"
$phone->getIntegerValue();
//11234567890

Testing

To run the testsuite, run the following command in the package directory:

composer test

To run phpstan’s static analysis, run:

composer analyze