Discovering attributes

The find() method searches an entire class for usages of an attribute: on the class itself, all methods, properties, constants, and method parameters.

##Basic usage

use Spatie\Attributes\Attributes;

#[Attribute(Attribute::TARGET_ALL)]
class Validate
{
    public function __construct(public string $rule = 'required') {}
}

#[Validate('exists:forms')]
class ContactForm
{
    #[Validate('string|max:255')]
    public string $name;

    #[Validate('email')]
    public string $email;

    public function submit(#[Validate('array')] array $data) {}
}

$results = Attributes::find(ContactForm::class, Validate::class);

count($results); // 4

##The AttributeTarget object

Each result is an AttributeTarget instance with three properties:

use Spatie\Attributes\AttributeTarget;

foreach ($results as $result) {
    $result->attribute; // The instantiated attribute (e.g. Validate instance)
    $result->target;    // The Reflection object (ReflectionClass, ReflectionMethod, etc.)
    $result->name;      // A human-readable name (e.g. 'name', 'submit', 'submit.data')
}

For the example above, the results would be:

For parameters, the name is formatted as method.parameter.

##Getting attribute values as an array

Use toArray() to get all attribute properties as a keyed array. This is useful when you don't know the attribute's structure upfront:

foreach ($results as $result) {
    $result->toArray();
}

For the example above, this would return:

##Using the reflection target

The target property gives you direct access to the underlying reflection object, so you can inspect additional details:

foreach (Attributes::find(ContactForm::class, Validate::class) as $result) {
    if ($result->target instanceof ReflectionProperty) {
        echo $result->target->getType(); // e.g. 'string'
    }
}

##Finding all attributes

You can call find() without an attribute filter to get every attribute on a class:

$results = Attributes::find(ContactForm::class);

// Returns all attributes across the class, methods, properties, constants, and parameters

##Inherited members

The find() method includes inherited methods, properties, and constants from parent classes. If a parent class has attributed members, they will appear in the results.