PHP Chess

PHP Chess is a library implemented in PHP that allows to create chess apps out-of-the-box.

One key feature is that it has been designed with OOP principles in mind and is thoroughly tested with plenty of unit tests. The unit tests are the best documentation. They contain hundreds of real examples on how to use the PHP Chess library.

Almost every class in the src folder represents a concept that is tested accordingly in the tests/unit folder, in other words, the structure of the tests/unit folder is mirroring the structure of the src folder. For further details on how to use a particular class, please feel free to browse the codebase and check out the corresponding tests.

The PHP Chess docs are more of a tutorial rather than an API description.

Common Formats Supported

Chess moves in LAN and PGN formats.
Movetext processing in LAN, SAN and RAV formats.
NAG support for SAN and RAV movetexts.
UCI protocol.
FEN conversion to chess board.
Chess board conversion to PNG and JPG image.
Chess board conversion to MP4 video.

Acronym	Description
LAN	Long Algebraic Notation
PGN	Portable Game Notation
SAN	Standard Algebraic Notation
RAV	Recursive Annotation Variation
NAG	Numeric Annotation Glyphs
UCI	Universal Chess Interface
FEN	Forsyth-Edwards Notation

Chess Variants

Multiple variants are supported with the default one being classical chess.

Variant	Chessboard
Capablanca	Chess\Variant\Capablanca\Board
Capablanca-Fischer	Chess\Variant\CapablancaFischer\Board
Chess960	Chess\Variant\Chess960\Board
Classical	Chess\Variant\Classical\Board

UCI Engines

Listed below are the UCI engines available at the moment.

Stockfish

Object-Oriented

The chess board representation is an object of type SplObjectStorage as opposed to a bitboard.

Thoroughly Tested

PHP Chess has been developed with a test-driven development (TDD) approach. The tests/unit folder contains plenty of real examples.

Lightweight

PHP dependencies required:

Rubix ML for machine learning.
Imagine for image processing.