types.md

Using Types

When you have a ReflectionParameter, you can determine types in the following ways:

class MyClass
{
    /**
     * @param array $myMethod
     */
    public function myMethod(array $myMethod = [])
    {
        // ... stuff ...
    }
}

<?php

use Roave\BetterReflection\BetterReflection;

$classInfo     = (new BetterReflection())->classReflector()->reflect('MyClass');
$methodInfo    = $classInfo->getMethod('myMethod');
$parameterInfo = $methodInfo->getParameter('myParameter');

// Will fetch the language hint
var_dump($parameterInfo->getType());

// Will fetch an array of Type objects for the typehint in the DocBlock
var_dump($parameterInfo->getDocBlockTypes());

// Will fetch an array of strings describing the DocBlock type hints
var_dump($parameterInfo->getDocBlockTypeStrings());

ReflectionParameter->getType()

This is compatible with the PHP 7 reflection API, and will return a \Roave\BetterReflection\Reflection\ReflectionType instance.

ReflectionFunction->getReturnType() and ReflectionMethod->getReturnType()

This is compatible with the PHP 7 reflection API, and will return a \Roave\BetterReflection\Reflection\ReflectionType instance.

getDocBlockTypes

The getDocBlockTypes() method will return an array of type hints that are extracted from the DocBlock. These are read by a phpDocumentor component, and so this returns an array of Type objects (see below).

getDocBlockTypeStrings

This is simply a convenience wrapper to fetch the types named as strings.

The Type object

The Type objects are actually types provided by the phpdocumentor/type-resolver library, which provides different types for describing PHP's internal types as well as classes, callables and so on. For more information, head over to phpDocumentor/TypeResolver for this excellent library!