Standard annotations library

A library of standard annotations will eventually be (but is not currently) part of this package.

Note

Experienced developers (primarily maintainers of libraries that rely on annotations), are encouraged to contribute or suggest changes or additions to the standard library.

The standard library of annotations generally belong to one (or more) of the following categories:

  • Reflective annotations to describe aspects of code semantics not natively supported by the PHP language.
  • Data annotations to describe storage/schema aspects of persistent types.
  • Display annotations to specify input types, labels, display-formatting and other UI-related aspects of your domain- or view-models.
  • Validation annotations to specify property/object validators for domain- or form-models, etc.
  • PHP-DOC annotations - a subset of the standard PHP-DOC annotations.

Some of the annotations belong to more than one of these categories - the standard PHP-DOC annotations generally fall into at least one of the other categories.

Most of the standard annotations were referenced from annotations that ship with other languages and frameworks that support annotations natively, mainly .NET and Java. Due to the strict nature of these languages, as compared to the loose nature of PHP, the standard annotations were not merely ported from other languages, but adapted to better fit with good, modern PHP code.

Available Annotations

Note

The annotation library is not yet available, or still in development.

Category: Reflective, PHP-DOC

Annotation Scope Description
MethodAnnotation Class Defines a magic/virtual method.
ParamAnnotation Method Defines a method-parameter’s type.
PropertyAnnotation Class Defines a magic/virtual property and it’s type.
PropertyReadAnnotation Class Defines a magic/virtual read-only property and it’s type.
PropertyWriteAnnotation Class Defines a magic/virtual write-only property and it’s type.
ReturnAnnotation Method Defines the return-type of a function or method.
VarAnnotation Property Specifies validation of various common property types.
TypeAnnotation Property Specifies validation of various common property types.

Category: Display

Annotation Scope Description
DisplayAnnotation Property Defines various display-related metadata, such as grouping and ordering.
EditableAnnotation Property Indicates whether a property should be user-editable or not.
EditorAnnotation Property Specifies a view-name (or path, or helper) to use for editing purposes - overrides ViewAnnotation when rendering inputs.
FormatAnnotation Property Specifies how to display or format a property value.
TextAnnotation Property Defines various text (labels, hints, etc.) to be displayed with the annotated property.
ViewAnnotation Property/class Specifies a view-name (or path) to use for display/editing purposes.

Category: Validation

Annotation Scope Description
EnumAnnotation Property Specifies validation against a fixed enumeration of valid choices.
LengthAnnotation Property Specifies validation of a string, requiring a minimum and/or maximum length.
MatchAnnotation Property Specifies validation of a string against a regular expression pattern.
RangeAnnotation Property Specifies validation against a minimum and/or maximum numeric value.
RequiredAnnotation Property Specifies validation requiring a non-empty value.
ValidateAnnotation Class Specifies a custom validation callback method.