How to find annotations in a PHP5 object?

Question

I would like to be able to implement custom annotations in my PHP5 objects, and I'd like to learn how the whole process works by building my own parser.

To start, though, I need to know how to FIND the annotations.

Is there a Reflection method that I am missing, or is there another way?

For example, I'd like to be able to find the following annotation in a class:

/**
 * @MyParam: myvalue
 */

Solution 1

You can do this using ReflectionClass::getDocComment, example:

function getClassAnnotations($class)
{       
    $r = new ReflectionClass($class);
    $doc = $r->getDocComment();
    preg_match_all('#@(.*?)\n#s', $doc, $annotations);
    return $annotations[1];
}

Live demo: http://codepad.viper-7.com/u8bFT4

Solution 2

You can get comment block using getDocComment Reflection object method.

If you don't want to retrieve annotation by hand, you can use Zend Framework Reflection or other existing solution

Comments

[Gordon]

possible duplicate of stackoverflow.com/search?q=annotation+parser+php

[leyou]

Why not using a library like doctrine annotations?

[johnnietheblack]

If there are multiple comments in the file, will it grab them all?

[MightyE]

->getDocComment() just gets the doc comment associated with the object you're examining (the docblock comment immediately preceding that thing's declaration). You can also get doc comments on objects, classes, methods, functions, and properties.

[Slawek]

@johnnietheblack you can use php.net/manual/pl/class.reflectionmethod.php - to grab comment only for specified method.

[johnnietheblack]

Ahhhh, cool...so I can use the ReflectionClass to grab the doccomment for the class, and then run through it's methods for their comments...

[Robik]

@johnnietheblack You can loop class methods using getMethods which returns array of ReflectionMethod objects, which you can to use get functions annotations.

[Daniel W.]

doctrine/annotations is most popular

[kmuenkel]

@DanFromGermany, Doctrine\Common\Annotations\AnnotationReder::getClassAnnotat‌​ions() seems to explicitly ignore things like @package and @method. I've also never seen so many usages of private and final preventing any possible override of this limitation. Is there a way around this?