PHPeas is a component architecture for the PHP 5 object model, and an associated set of helper libraries to help simplify and enhance the existing PHP object introspection and reflection APIs.

A PHPea is an object oriented, reusable software component built using the PHP 5 Object Model. The primary, unifying feature that distinguishes a PHPea is its support for instrospection, specifically by following the design patterns in this specification document.

A pea is not required to inherit from any particular base class or interface.

Properties and methods:
- The two most important features of a PHPea are the set of properties it exposes and the set of methods it allows other components to call.
- Basically, properties are named attributes associated with a pea that can be read or written by calling appropriate methods (accessors) on the pea.
- The methods a PHPea exports are just normal PHP class methods which can be called from other components.