Custom PHPDoc types

All custom types that are specific to Larastan are listed here. Types that are defined by PHPStan can be found on their website.

view-string

The view-string type is a subset of the string type. Any string that passes the view()->exists($string) test is also a valid view-string.

Example:

/**
 * @phpstan-param view-string $view
 * @param string $view
 * @return \Illuminate\View\View
 */
public function renderView(string $view): View
{
    return view($view);
}

Now, whenever you call renderView, Larastan will try to check whether the given string is a valid blade view.

If the string is not an existing blade view, the following error will be displayed by Larastan.

Parameter #1 $view of method TestClass::renderView() expects view-string, string given.  

When working with packages, all vendor-prefixed paths like acme::example may fail. As packages don't contain a Laravel app, the default skeleton from orchestra/testbench is used. This instance doesn't know about the package so views are not registered. Create a testbench.yaml file to register your service provider to solve this issue.

providers:
    - Acme\AcmeServiceProvider

model-property

model-property extends the built-in string type and acts like a string in the type level. But during the analysis if Larastan finds that an argument of the method or a function has a model-property<ModelName>, it'll try to check that the given argument value is actually a property of the model.

All of the Laravel core methods have this type thanks to the stubs. So whenever you use a Eloquent builder, relation or a model method that expects a column, it'll be checked by Larastan if the column actually exists. But you can also typehint any argument with model-property in your code.

The actual check is done by the ModelPropertyRule. You can read the details here.

collection-of

The collection-of<Model> type resolves to the appropriate collection class for a given Eloquent model. This is useful when you want to type-hint that a method returns or accepts a collection of specific model instances.

Larastan automatically determines the correct collection type:

• If the model has a custom collection (via newCollection() method or CollectedBy attribute), it resolves to that collection
• Otherwise, it resolves to Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection<int, Model>

Example:

use App\User;
use App\Post;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection;

/**
 * @phpstan-return collection-of<User>
 */
function getActiveUsers(): Collection
{
    return User::where('active', true)->get();
}

/**
 * @phpstan-param collection-of<Post> $posts
 */
function publishPosts(Collection $posts): void
{
    $posts->each(fn ($post) => $post->publish());
}

If User has a custom UserCollection, collection-of<User> will resolve to UserCollection<int, User>. If Post uses the standard Eloquent collection, collection-of<Post> will resolve to Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection<int, Post>.

Template Support:

The collection-of type also works with generic templates:

/**
 * @template TModel of \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model
 */
class ModelRepository
{
    /**
     * @phpstan-param class-string<TModel> $modelClass
     * @phpstan-return collection-of<TModel>
     */
    public function findAll(string $modelClass): Collection
    {
        return $modelClass::all();
    }
}