README

Version 1.9

Copyright © 2011-2025 Martijn van der Lee. MIT Open Source license applies.

Introduction

PHP Syllable splitting and hyphenation. or rather... PHP Syl-la-ble split-ting and hy-phen-ation.

Based on the work by Frank M. Liang (http://www.tug.org/docs/liang/) and the many volunteers in the TeX community.

Many languages supported. i.e. english (us/uk), spanish, german, french, dutch, italian, romanian, russian, etc. 76 languages in total.

Language sources: http://tug.org/tex-hyphen/#languages

Supports PHP 7.1 and up, so you can use it on older servers.

Installation

Install phpSyllable via Composer

composer require vanderlee/syllable

or simply add phpSyllable to your project and set up the project's autoloader for phpSyllable's src/ directory.

Usage

Instantiate a Syllable object and start hyphenation.

Minimal example:

$syllable = new \Vanderlee\Syllable\Syllable('en-us');
echo $syllable->hyphenateText('Provide a plethora of paragraphs');

Extended example:

use Vanderlee\Syllable\Syllable;
use Vanderlee\Syllable\Hyphen;

// Globally set the directory where Syllable can store cache files.
// By default, this is the cache/ folder in this package, but usually
// you want to have the folder outside the package. Note that the cache
// folder must be created beforehand.
Syllable::setCacheDir(__DIR__ . '/cache');

// Globally set the directory where the .tex files are stored.
// By default, this is the languages/ folder of this package and
// usually does not need to be adapted.
Syllable::setLanguageDir(__DIR__ . '/languages');

// Create a new instance for the language.
$syllable = new Syllable('en-us');

// Set the style of the hyphen. In this case it is the "-" character.
// By default, it is the soft hyphen "­".
$syllable->setHyphen(new Hyphen\Dash());

// Set the minimum word length required for hyphenation.
// By default, all words are hyphenated.
$syllable->setMinWordLength(5);

// Output hyphenated text ..
echo $syllable->hyphenateText('Provide your own paragraphs...');
// .. or hyphenated HTML.
echo $syllable->hyphenateHtmlText('<b>... with highlighted text.</b>');

See the demo.php file for a working example.

Syllable API reference

The following describes the API of the main Syllable class. In most cases, you will not use any other functions. Browse the code under src/ for all available functions.

public __construct($language = 'en-us', string|Hyphen $hyphen = null)

Create a new Syllable class, with defaults.

public static setCacheDir(string $dir)

Set the directory where compiled language files may be stored. Default to the cache subdirectory of the current directory.

public static setEncoding(string|null $encoding = null)

Set the character encoding to use. Specify null encoding to not apply any encoding at all.

public static setLanguageDir(string $dir)

Set the directory where language source files can be found. Default to the languages subdirectory of the current directory.

public setLanguage(string $language)

Set the language whose rules will be used for hyphenation.

public addHyphenations(array $hyphenations)

Add any number of custom hyphenation patterns, using '-' to specify where hyphens may occur. Omit the '-' from the pattern to add words that will not be hyphenated.

public setHyphen(mixed $hyphen)

Set the hyphen text or object to use as a hyphen marker.

public getHyphen(): Hyphen

Get the current hyphen object.

public setCache(Cache $cache = null)

public getCache(): Cache

public setSource($source)

public getSource(): Source

public setMinWordLength(int $length = 0)

Words need to contain at least this many character to be hyphenated.

public getMinWordLength(): int

public setLibxmlOptions(int $libxmlOptions)

Options to use for HTML parsing by libxml. See: https://www.php.net/manual/de/libxml.constants.php.

public excludeAll()

Exclude all elements.

public excludeElement(string|string[] $elements)

Add one or more elements to exclude from HTML.

public excludeAttribute(string|string[] $attributes, $value = null)

Add one or more elements with attributes to exclude from HTML.

public excludeXpath(string|string[] $queries)

Add one or more xpath queries to exclude from HTML.

public includeElement(string|string[] $elements)

Add one or more elements to include from HTML.

public includeAttribute(string|string[] $attributes, $value = null)

Add one or more elements with attributes to include from HTML.

public includeXpath(string|string[] $queries)

Add one or more xpath queries to include from HTML.

public splitWord(string $word): array

Split a single word on where the hyphenation would go. Punctuation is not supported, only simple words. For parsing whole sentences please use Syllable::splitWords() or Syllable::splitText().

public splitWords(string $text): array

Split a text into an array of punctuation marks and words, splitting each word on where the hyphenation would go.

public splitText(string $text): array

Split a text on where the hyphenation would go.

public hyphenateWord(string $word): string

Hyphenate a single word.

public hyphenateText(string $text): string

Hyphenate all words in the plain text.

public hyphenateHtml(string $html): string

Hyphenate all readable text in the HTML, excluding HTML tags and attributes. Deprecated: Use the UTF-8 capable hyphenateHtmlText() instead. This method is kept only for backward compatibility and will be removed in the next major version 2.0.

public hyphenateHtmlText(string $html): string

Hyphenate all readable text in the HTML, excluding HTML tags and attributes. This method is UTF-8 capable and should be preferred over hyphenateHtml().

public histogramText(string $text): array

Count the number of syllables in the text and return a map with syllable count as key and number of words for that syllable count as the value.

public countWordsText(string $text): int

Count the number of words in the text.

public countSyllablesText(string $text): int

Count the number of syllables in the text.

public countPolysyllablesText(string $text): int

Count the number of polysyllables in the text.

Development

Update language files

Run

composer dump-autoload --dev
./build/update-language-files

to fetch the latest language files remotely and optionally use environment variables to customize the update process:

CONFIGURATION_FILE

Specify the absolute path of the configuration file where the language files to be downloaded are defined. The configuration file has the following format:

{
	"files": [
		{
			"_comment": "<comment>",
			"fromUrl": "<absolute-remote-file-url>",
			"toPath": "<relative-local-file-path>",
			"disabled": <true|false>
		}
	]
}

where the attributes are self-explanatory and _comment and disabled are optional. See for example build/update-language-files.json. Default: The build/update-language-files.json file of this package.

MAX_REDIRECTS

Specify the maximum number of URL redirects allowed when retrieving a language file. Default: 1.

WITH_COMMIT

Create (1) or skip (0) a Git commit from the updated language files. Default: 0.

LOG_LEVEL

Set the verbosity of the script to verbose (6), warnings and errors (4), errors only (3) or silent (0). Default: 6.

For example use

composer dump-autoload --dev
LOG_LEVEL=0 ./build/update-language-files

to silently run the script without outputting any logging.

Update API documentation

Run

composer dump-autoload --dev
./build/generate-docs

to update the API documentation in this README.md. This should be done when the Syllable class has been modified. Optionally, you can use environment variables to modify the documentation update process:

WITH_COMMIT

Create (1) or skip (0) a Git commit from the adapted files. Default: 0.

LOG_LEVEL

Set the verbosity of the script to verbose (6), warnings and errors (4), errors only (3) or silent (0). Default: 6.

Create release

Run

composer dump-autoload --dev
./build/create-release

to create a local release of the project by adding a changelog to this README.md. Optionally, you can use environment variables to modify the release process:

RELEASE_TYPE

Set the release type to major (0), minor (1) or patch (2) release. Default: 2.

WITH_COMMIT

Create (1) or skip (0) a Git commit from the adapted files and apply the release tag. Default: 0.

LOG_LEVEL

Set the verbosity of the script to verbose (6), warnings and errors (4), errors only (3) or silent (0). Default: 6.

Tests

Run

composer install
./vendor/bin/phpunit

to execute the tests.

Changes

1.7

• Use \hyphenations case-insensitive (like \patterns)
• Correct handling of UTF-8 character sets when hyphenating HTML using the new Syllable::hyphenateHtmlText()
• Replace invalid "en" with "en-us" as default language of Syllable
• Update of hyph-de.tex

1.6

• Revert renaming of API method names
• Use cache version as string instead of number
• Cover caching with tests
• Reduce the PHP test matrix to the latest versions of PHP 5, 7 and 8
• Check via GitHub Action if the API documentation is up-to-date
• Update API reference
• Fix API documentation of an array as parameter default value
• Satisfy StyleCI
• Commit changed files of entire working tree in build context
• Support for generation of API documentation in README.md
• Add words with reduced hyphenation to collection from PR #26
• Satisfy StyleCI
• Add test for collection of words with reduced hyphenation
• Refactor splitWord(), splitWords() and splitText() of Syllable class
• Remove @covers annotation in tests
• Added splitWords and various code quality improvements
• Update the README.md copyright claim on release
• Skip GitHub Action scheduler in forks and run tests only in PR context
• Allow GitHub Action "Update languages" workflow to bypass reviews
• Use German orthography from 2006 as standard orthography

1.5.5

• Automatic update of 74 languages

1.5.4

• Automatically run tests for every push and pull request
• Automatic monthly update and release of language files
• Fix small typo in README and add 'use' in example.
• Use same code format as in src/Source/File.php
• Fix opening brace
• Remove whitespace
• Fix closing brace
• Use PHP syntax highlighting

1.5.3

• Fixed PHP 7.4 compatibility (#37) by @Dargmuesli.

1.5.2

• Fixed bug reverted in refactoring (continue 3) by @Dargmuesli.

1.5.1

• Fixed bug reverted in refactoring (continue 2).

1.5

• Refactored for modern PHP and support for current PHP version.

1.4.6

• Added setMinWordLength($length) and getMinWordLength() to limit hyphenation to words with at least the specified number of characters.

1.4.5

• Fixes for composer.

1.4.4

• Composer autoloader added

1.4.3

• Improved documentation

1.4.2

• Updated spanish language files.
• Initial PHPDoc.

1.4.1

• More fixes for apostrophes in splitting.

1.4

• Fix for French language handling
• Refactor .text loading into source class.
• Massive cache performance increase (excessive writes).

1.3.1

• Fix slow initial cache writing; too many writes (only one was needed).
• Removed min_hyphenation; mb_strlen takes more time than hashmap lookup.

1.3

• Added array histogramText($text), integer countWordsText($text) and integer countPolysyllableText($text) methods.
• Refactored cache interface.
• Improved unittests.

1.2

• Deprecated treshold feature. Was based on misinterpretation of the algorithm. Methods, constants and constructor signature unchanged, although you can now omit the treshold if you want (or leave it in, it's detected as a "fake" treshold).