PHP Doc for non declared properties in your class

Mar 8, 2011 misc-web php

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You may find while working with projects like Zend Framework that you have a number of publicly available properties of your classes that are not defined and documented. They might be part of a getter/setter magic method or just purely dynamic. Well, using PHPDoc, there is a cool tag called property that helps. For example…

Base class with getter/setters

class base
{
  /**
   * @var data storage
   */
  protected $_data = array();
    
  /**
   * setter method - used to store data in self::$_data
   */
  public function __set($name, $value)
  { 
    $this->_data[$name] = $value;
  }
    
  /**
   * getter method - retrieves info from self::$_data
   */
  public function __get($name)
  {
    return isset($this->_data[$name]) ? $this->_data[$name] : null;
  }
}

Now, let’s say we have an object of type Person which we know will have a first name and a last name. However, its not defined in this class for some reason.

Class with @property definition

class person extends base
{
  // @property string $first_name The user's first name
  // @property string $last_name The user's last name
}

Now, when creating instance of this class, if your IDE supports PHPDoc, you will now have those previously undocumented and undefined properties available.