How to document magic (_call and _callStatic) methods for IDEs

Question

After many happy years coding in notepad++ and sublime, I\'ve been advised to give a PHP IDE a go. I\'m trying out phpStorm and it seems nice. The code completion and docum

Answer 1

Somewhat related to original question:

You can also define this in phpstorm meta file. Here's an example for factory method (v2016.3):

// Define in .phpstorm.meta.php
namespace PHPSTORM_META {
    $STATIC_METHOD_TYPES = [
        \Factory::create('') => [],
    ];
}

// Then use in code
$factory = new \Factory();
$user = $factory->create(\User::class);
// Here you get autocomplete.
$user->subscribe();

This way you don't have to docblock every possibility when magic happens.

Have some docs for details.

Answer 2

Use class-level PHPDoc comment -- specifically @method tag -- works fine in PhpStorm:

/**
 * @method static someClass get_by_user_id(int $id) Bla-bla
 * @method static someClass get_first_by_id(int $id) 
 */
abstract class a {
...

In the above:

• @method -- PHPDoc tag
• static -- tells that this is static method
• someClass or $this -- return type
• get_by_user_id -- method name
• (int $id) -- method signature: ([[type] [parameter]<, ...>])
• Bla-bla -- some optional description

More about @method:

• https://docs.phpdoc.org/latest/references/phpdoc/tags/method.html
• https://github.com/phpDocumentor/phpDocumentor2/blob/develop/docs/PSR.md#711-method

P.S. While @method static works fine in PhpStorm (tells IDE that method is static) it may not be (yet?) supported by actual phpDocumentor tool (sorry, have not used it for a while).

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Alternatively: (in PhpStorm, of course) Settings | Inspections | PHP | Undefined | Undefined method --> Downgrade severity if __magic methods are present in class -- it will not help with code completion for such methods in any way, but will not mark those magic methods as "undefined method" errors.

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phpDocumentor's ticket regarding using RegEx/partial names for @property/@method tags (how it can be useful for documentation and how little help it may bring to the actual IDE when dealing with code completion):

• https://github.com/phpDocumentor/phpDocumentor2/issues/689