How to document class properties in PHP 5 with phpDocumentor

Question

Take in consideration the following PHP 5 class:

class SomeClass
{
    //I want to document this property...
    private $foo;


    function __construct()
          


        

Answer 1

I would generally use at least the @var tag, to indicate the type of variable this is.

For instance :

/**
 * Some blah blah about what this is useful for
 * @var MyClass $foo
 */

This is exactly what's done by Zend Framework, for instance ; see Zend_Layout (quoting) :

class Zend_Layout
{
    /**
     * Placeholder container for layout variables
     * @var Zend_View_Helper_Placeholder_Container
     */
    protected $_container;

    /**
     * Key used to store content from 'default' named response segment
     * @var string
     */
    protected $_contentKey = 'content';

Note : the @access tag was useful with PHP 4 (when there were no public/protected/private), but I never use it when I document code written in PHP 5 : the code, using the visibility keywords is self-documenting.

Answer 2

In the case you use a __get and __set magic methods you can use @property

/**
  * Description for the class
  * @property type $foo Description for foo
  * @property type $foo Description for bar
  */
 class SomeClass
 {
     private $foo;
     protected $bar;

     public function __get(){
         ...
     }

     public function __set(){
         ...
     }
 }

Links with more info:

• http://www.phpdoc.org/docs/latest/for-users/phpdoc/tags/property.html
• http://manual.phpdoc.org/HTMLSmartyConverter/HandS/phpDocumentor/tutorial_tags.property.pkg.html

Answer 3

/**
 * This is what the variable does. The var line contains the type stored in this variable.
 * @var string
 */
private $foo;

Answer 4

/**
 * docstring
 */
private $foo;

Important note: there should be two asterisks. Not one.