Advent of Code solutions in PHP by TBali

• AoC website
• My AoC username: tbali0524
• Puzzle list with topics and my completion status
• Some memes from AoC subreddit
• Link to this repo on GitHub

Installation

The solutions are using only the standard php library, they have NO 3rd-party package dependencies. However, Composer is used for its class autoloader:

composer install

Note: Some solutions require more memory than what a default PHP installation provides, so it is recommended to set memory_limit = -1 in php.ini.

Batch solution runner

Run solutions from the project base directory with:

php src/aoc.php [LANGUAGE] [YEAR] [DAY]

Argument	Effect
LANGUAGE given	invoke interpreter with standalone solution scripts
all given as the LANGUAGE	invoke standalone solution scripts in all languages
LANGUAGE not given	invoke class-based PHP solutions
none of YEAR and DAY given	run all solutions
only YEAR given	run all solutions for that season only
both YEAR and DAY given	run a specific solution

On Windows, the shortcut .\aoc.bat [LANGUAGE] [YEAR] [DAY] also works.

Possible values for LANGUAGE: all, dart, f#, go, groovy, java, javascript, lua, perl, php, python, ruby, scala.

Puzzle input

• Directory pattern: input/YYYY/, where YYYY is the year.
• Filename pattern: AocYYYYDayDD.txt, where DD is the day padded to 2 digits with zero.
• Optional additional example input can be in AocYYYYDayDDex1.txt, AocYYYYDayDDex2.txt, etc.
• Alternatively, a single string input can be given in the STRING_INPUT or EXAMPLE_STRING_INPUTS constants in the solution class.
• Additionally, some extra large input can be given in AocYYYYDayDDlarge1.txt, AocYYYYDayDDlarge2.txt, ...
  • These will be run ONLY if the LARGE_SOLUTIONS constant array is overriden in the solution class.

Class-based PHP solutions

• Directory pattern: src/AocYYYY/.
• Filename pattern: AocYYYYDayDD.php.
• For a new solution, use the template in src/Aoc2024Day00.php.
• Solution should implement class AocYYYYDayDD, extending SolutionBase.
• It should implement the solve() method and override the constants in the Solution interface.
• The solve() method must be callable repeatedly with different inputs.
• After successful submit, the puzzle answers shall be recorded in the SOLUTIONS class constant (for future regression tests).

Standalone script-based solutions

• Directory pattern: src/other/AocYYYY/.
• Filename pattern: AocYYYYDayDD.ext.
  • (For PHP only: the pattern is AocYYYYDayDDscr.php to avoid having the same source filename as the class-based solution.)
• The script shall read the input file (if needed), print the problem ID and the solution.

Custom Composer scripts

The following helper commands are defined in composer.json:

Command	Description
start	Run all solutions with AocRunner
test	Run solutions and create test coverage report with PHPUnit
cs	Check coding style compliance to PSR12 with PHP_CodeSniffer
cs-fixer	Check coding style compliance to PSR12 plus extra rules with PHP-CS-Fixer (no fix applied)
cs-fixer-do	Apply coding style fixes with PHP-CS-Fixer
doc	Create documentation with phpDocumentor
lint	Check syntax errors with Parallel-Lint
loc	Get code summary report with phploc
metrics	Generate code metrics report with PhpMetrics
stan	Run static analysis with PHPStan
qa	Run code quality checks: PHP_CodeSniffer, PHP-CS-Fixer, PHPStan
qa-full	Run all code quality checks: PHP_CodeSniffer, PHP-CS-Fixer, PHPStan, Parallel-Lint, PhpMetrics, phpDocumentor, PHPUnit, and run all solutions
open-cover	Open generated test coverage report in browser (fixed file path)
open-doc	Open generated documentation in browser (fixed file path)
open-metrics	Open generated code metrics report in browser (fixed file path)
clean	Delete generated cache and report files in .tools and docs directories (Windows only)

Note: The above tools are NOT listed in composer.json as dev dependencies. Instead, the commands must be available in the PATH. See minimum version requirements in the config files.