Type casting in PHPDocumentor

Question

Is there any type casting for PHPDocumentor in PHPStorm? My PHPStorm IntelliSense is stubborn and i need to teach him how to behave.

This is my case:

I have a manager that instantiates classes that all extend same class. Usually i would cast my class after it was returned but PHP doesn't know how to do that. IntelliSense and PHPDocumentor support would be enough for me but i don't know how to type cast.

This is the code:

class Plugin 
{

}

class HelloPlugin extends Plugin
{
    public function hello()
    {

    }
}

class PluginManager 
{
    /** @var HelloPlugin */
    public $helloPlugin;

    function __construct()
    {
        $this->helloPlugin = $this->getPlugin('HelloPlugin');

        // Here my PHPStorm IntelliSense doesn't provide 'hello()' function for 'helloPlugin' because return type overwrote original type
        // I get error: method 'hello' not found in class
        $this->helloPlugin->hello();
    }

    /**
     * @param string $pluginClass
     * @return Plugin
     */
    function getPlugin($pluginClass)
    {
        return new $pluginClass;
    }

}

Answer 1

I do not think it's actually possible :( , unless you rewrite your code somehow (just for PhpStorm ... no way).

Your code and PHPDoc is fine -- it's an IDE issue -- it temporarily (within that method only) overwrites manually provided type hint with the one it detects (it will work fine in other methods). Please vote: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WI-17047