Psalm plugin for Laravel

Laravel static analysis with built-in security scanning.

The only free tool that combines deep Laravel type analysis with taint-based vulnerability detection. Catches SQL injection, XSS, SSRF, shell injection, file traversal, and open redirects, without running your code.

[!NOTE] Already using Larastan? psalm-laravel complements it with security analysis that PHPStan cannot provide.

Security scanning

Plugin ships Laravel-specific taint stubs that track user input from source to sink across your entire codebase. Unlike pattern-matching tools, Psalm follows dataflow across function boundaries, catching vulnerabilities that simpler scanners miss.

// psalm-laravel catches this:
Route::get('/search', function (Request $request) {
    $sortByColumn = $request->input('sort'); // Tainted source: user input from HTTP request
    User::where('name', $request->input('name'))
        ->orderBy($sortByColumn) // 🚨 Tainted sink: unvalidated user input used in query builder
        ->get();

// Psalm output:
// ERROR TaintedSql: Detected tainted SQL
});

Taint analysis also works across helper functions, service classes, and any number of call layers.

// UserController.php
$user->siteSettinsg['articles_sort'] = $request->input('sort'); // Tainted source: user input from HTTP request
$user->save();

// ArticlesConstoller.php
Articles::query()
    ->orderBy($user->siteSettinsg['articles_sort']) // 🚨 Tainted sink: unvalidated user input used in query builder
    ->get();

// Psalm output:
// ERROR TaintedSql: Detected tainted SQL

You can read more about how the plugin's taint analysis works and what vulnerabilities it detects in docs/security.md.

Quickstart

Step 1: Install

Since Psalm 7.x is currently in beta, allow dev (or beta) packages first:

composer config minimum-stability dev && composer config prefer-stable true
composer require --dev psalm/plugin-laravel:^4.8

Step 2: Generate a Laravel-tailored psalm.xml

./vendor/bin/psalm-laravel init

This writes a psalm.xml at the project root with the plugin already enabled, sensible errorLevel, and Laravel-friendly issue handler defaults. Pass --level 1 (strictest) through --level 8 (most lenient) to pick a starting strictness. Pass --force to overwrite an existing psalm.xml without prompting.

Step 3: Run

./vendor/bin/psalm-laravel analyze

analyze delegates to vendor/bin/psalm and passes the exit code through, so you can also invoke ./vendor/bin/psalm directly. Security taint analysis runs automatically, no extra flags needed.

Existing projects: the first run will likely report many issues. Create a baseline to suppress them and focus only on new code:

./vendor/bin/psalm --set-baseline=psalm-baseline.xml

From here, gradually increase errorLevel (start at 4, work toward 1) and shrink the baseline over time.

Optional: wire up CI in one command

./vendor/bin/psalm-laravel add github

Writes a ready-to-commit .github/workflows/psalm.yml that runs the plugin on every push and pull request. See docs/github-actions.md for what the generated workflow does and how to customize it.

Configuration

You can customize Psalm configuration using XML config and/or cli parameters.

See docs/config.md for all configuration options.

Custom checks

The plugin ships advanced Laravel-aware static analysis checks that extend Psalm's built-in diagnostics. See docs/issues/index.md for the full catalog.

Versions & Dependencies

Maintained versions:

(Older versions of Laravel, PHP, and Psalm were supported by version 1.x of the plugin, but they are no longer maintained)

See releases for more details about supported PHP, Laravel and Psalm versions.

How it works

Under the hood it reads Laravel's native @method annotations on facade classes and generates alias stubs based on Illuminate\Foundation\AliasLoader (including aliases from your config/app.php and package discovery). It also ships hand-crafted stubs for taint analysis and special cases.

It also parses SQL schema dumps (php artisan schema:dump) and PHP migration files to infer column names and types in your database models.

Psalm-Laravel or Larastan?

Use both. They solve different problems:

• Larastan excels at Laravel-specific type rules: model-property validation, view-string checks, and 17+ custom rules.
• Psalm-Laravel in addition to type checks, it provides taint-based security analysis that PHPStan structurally cannot offer, plus deep type support for auth guards, Eloquent attributes, scopes, attributes, etc.

Psalm and PHPStan use almost the same annotation syntax, so they work side by side without conflicts.

Larastan checks your types. We check your security. Use both.

Contributing

Maintained by @alies-dev. There are contributing docs that may help you (and your agents) with contributions.

Areas where help is especially needed:

• Taint analysis coverage: adding a stub is 5 to 15 lines of annotations and protects thousands of apps. See the authoring guide.
• Type inference for Laravel magic (Eloquent, Facades, Collections).
• New checks that enforce Laravel best practices.