How do I make my PHP IDE understand Dependency Injection Containers?

Solution 1:

You can define class of the variable 'manually':

/** @var YourClassType $mailer */
$mailer = $container['mailer'];

In PhpStorm (and by standards), use two asterisks and write the data type before the name of the variable.

You can write the data type without the name of the variable (but not the name without the data type).

Solution 2:

While you can certainly tell your IDE the type of the object pulled out of your container every time you access it, it's better to do it once. Both of the following solutions involve subclassing the container. I just started using Pimple which recommends doing this anyway.

For containers that use instance members accessed with -> or exposed via the magic __get method, you can tell your IDE what type they hold. This is great because it doesn't involve any additional parsing when the code is run--only the IDE is bothered by it.

/**
 * My container. It contains things. Duh.
 *
 * @property MyService $service
 * @property MyDao $dao
 */
class MyContainer extends Container { }

For Pimple and other containers that act as arrays you can create accessor functions for the top-level objects you'll need. While it means more parsing when the container is created, it should be done once and kept in APC. I vastly prefer a method over array access anyway since it places the easy-to-forget array key inside an auto-completed method.

class MyContainer extends Pimple
{
    /**
     * @return MyService
     */
    public function getMyService() {
        return $this['service'];
    }
}

BTW, for type-hinting inline variables with @var in NetBeans you need to use /* with one asterisk. This is not a doc-block comment and doesn't work with /** or //. Also, the name comes before the type.

public function foo() {
    /* @var $service MyService */
    $service = $container['service'];
    ...
}

Solution 3:

As the IDE's do not exectue the code, they do not know and need some help form you. I know this works for Eclipse and other IDEs as well: Hint the variable's type.

Netbeans / Phpstorm / PDT / ZendStudio Example

/* @var $mailer MailerInterface */
$mailer = $sc->mailer

Code complete starts to work again on $mailer.

For PDT it's important that:

1. The comment starts with one * only.
2. First the variable name, than the hint.

Alternative Comment Variants

As it was subject to a lot of discussion, it can differ between IDEs. However most IDEs support variable hinting for inline code variables in the way above. So depending on the IDE this might be written differently but similar, like here with two asterisks in front:

/** @var $mailer MailerInterface */

PHPDoc compatibility

PHPDoc parsers can have a problem if you mimic the class var doc-comment for inline code as so:

/** @var MailerInterface $mailer  */

That documentation is normally used for class variables (@var - Document the data type of a class variable). PHPDoc is then missing the definition of the class variable after the comment which involves a burden for QA.

However some IDEs will offer code completition for simple variables as well when written in PHPDoc clas-variable style. I do not know if that has side-effects for the code-completition of the current class then as a new member might get introduced that actually does not exists.