Comment associative array in PHP Documentor

Question

I use several associative arrays in my PHP application and I'm using PHP documentor to comment my sources. I never really did specify comments for the arrays in an array, but now I need to do that and don't know how.

$array = array('id' => 'test', 'class' => 'tester', 'options' => array('option1' => 1, 'option2' => 2))

How do I comment this array in the correct way for @var and @param comments? I could do this like this, but I don't know if this is correct:

@param string $array['id']
@param string $array['class']
@param int $array['options']['option1']

But how to do this for the @var part?

Solution 1

You can't document each key, but you can tell phpDocumentor what type it is.

You could do something like this:

/**
 * Form the array like this:
 * <code>
 * $array = array(
 *   'id'      => 'foo',          // the id
 *   'class'   => 'myClass',     // the class
 * );
 * 
 * </code>
 *
 * @var array[string]string 
 */
$array;

Solution 2

I would look at the WordPress Inline Documentation Reference for some hints, though it's not currently comprehensive.

Use @param or @var or @property, whichever is appropriate in your context

According to those guidelines, you might document your associative array like this:

/**
 * @property array $my_array {
 *     An array of parameters that customize the way the parser works.
 *
 *     @type boolean $ignore_whitespace Whether to gobble up whitespace. Default true.
 *     @type string $error_level What the error reporting level is. Default 'none'.
 *                               Accepts 'none', 'low', 'high'.
 * }
 */

Solution 3

For me this works fine in PhpStorm for nice return value description:

/**
 * @param string $requestUri
 * @return array[
 *  'controller' => string,
 *  'action' => string
 * ]
 */

Comments

[Sepster]

Has this been confirmed to work with auto-complete/intellisense in any IDEs, I wonder? According to the phpDoc ABNF for type definitions, there's no allowance for a type to be specified for the array index. And it specifies array as @var string[] (the array component is only supposed to be present for "unspecified" arrays).

[Stephen Fuhry]

@Sepster I don't think most IDEs are smart enough to recognize this, unfortunately. Your mileage may vary, but I even find Zend Studio's implementation a bit lacking when it comes to this sort of accute type awareness.

[faintsignal]

Updated link for ABNF mentioned in Sepster's comment: phpdoc.org/docs/latest/references/phpdoc/types.html

[Andrew Sauder]

This notation for documenting array structures has never made it into official PHPDoc spec despite serious discussion in 2013-14 about adding it.

[Ben Creasy]

Seems to be some related discussion at github.com/phpDocumentor/phpDocumentor2/issues/650

[Chad]

Tried this in Webstorm 2020.1 EAP for a param description and it mangled the help popup. In my experience this doesn't work.

[luukvhoudt]

The example is confusing, it's not possible by looking at the @var annotation which type is used for the array key or value. Now I can't figure out if the string type hint inside or after the squared brackets is specifying the type of the key.

[Jordan Pickwell]

The latest ABNF for types: github.com/php-fig/fig-standards/blob/master/proposed/…

[Gogowitsch]

The WordPress guide seems similar to what Psalm recommends: psalm.dev/docs/annotating_code/type_syntax/array_types/…

[Gherman]

I think this answer may be misleading. It says "phpDocumentor". However the link actually leads to "PHPLint". I think it's a different software. There's no reason why PHPLint syntax would also be valid phpDoc syntax.