Thesis Headers

Typed headers for PHP libraries and applications.

• Decode raw string headers into typed values
• Encode typed values back to wire-safe strings
• Preserve unknown or untouched raw values as-is
• Memoize decoded values
• Compose immutable header sets with with(), without() and withMerged()
• Built-in bool, int, string, enum and time headers

Requirements

• PHP 8.4+

Installation

composer require thesis/headers

Quick start

Define headers once as constants and use them for typed reads and writes:

use Thesis\Headers;
use Thesis\Headers\BackedEnumHeader;
use Thesis\Headers\BoolHeader;
use Thesis\Headers\IntHeader;
use Thesis\Headers\NonEmptyStringHeader;
use Thesis\Headers\TimeHeader;

enum ContentType: string
{
    case Html = 'text/html';
    case Json = 'application/json';
}

const CONTENT_TYPE = new BackedEnumHeader(ContentType::class, 'content-type');
const DATE = new TimeHeader('date');
const IS_PRIVATE = new BoolHeader('x-private');
define('RETRY_AFTER', IntHeader::nonNegative('retry-after'));
const REQUEST_ID = new NonEmptyStringHeader('x-request-id');

$raw = [
    'content-type' => 'application/json',
    'date' => '2026-07-31T12:00:00.123456+00:00',
    'retry-after' => '60',
    'x-private' => '0',
];

$headers = new Headers($raw);

var_dump($headers->get(CONTENT_TYPE)); // ContentType::Json
var_dump($headers->get(DATE)); // DateTimeImmutable
var_dump($headers->get(IS_PRIVATE)); // false
var_dump($headers->get(RETRY_AFTER)); // 60

$newHeaders = $headers
    ->with(CONTENT_TYPE, ContentType::Html) // replace header
    ->withDefault(REQUEST_ID, uniqid(...)) // set header only when missing
    ->without(DATE) // remove header
    ->withMerged(new Headers()->with(IS_PRIVATE, true)) // merge, right side wins
;

var_dump($newHeaders->encode());
// [
//     'content-type' => 'text/html',
//     'retry-after' => '60',
//     'x-private' => '1',
//     'x-request-id' => '6a6c90cae6b1d',
// ]