I am coming from a strictly typed programming language, which has a type named "ANY".
Because PHP is loosely coupled, I would need for my PhpDoc some sort of type hinting saying that the variable, parameter or return value can be of any type. At the moment I have to write something like:
@var string|int|bool|array|object $someVariable
It would make my life easier and the code would be much easier to read if I could write instead:
@var any $someVariable
I am actually having this problem in many cases - more than 20-30 times by now in the last months, since I use PhpStorm, which is showing me warnings that some other kind of parameter type is expected for some method, either because I forgot to put it explicitly in the list of types or because I am using code written in Eclipse, which did not show any warnings for my self-proclaimed "any" type.
My question: is there a way to tell PhpStorm that when I say any I actually mean string|any|bool|array|object or is there some other type hint which says that? I am also curious if I am the only one having this issue or if there are some others working like this.
You should use "mixed" for that. Also with PHP7.0 there is actual type hinting for parameters and return values.