I am writing a php method according to phpDocumentor format. The method just returns json, and I wrote String at the momemnt. I am wondering is this correct?
/**
* This is a method returns json
* @return String
*/
public function _getJsonData() {
.....
}
Yes ... but no.
You are right that a function returning JSON is returning a string as far as PHP's type system is concerned, and that's all phpDocumentor cares about.
However, by convention the built-in type is always lower-case, and a leading upper-case letter would indicate a class name, so you should be using @return string not @return String.
Note also that unless you need your code to run on really old versions of PHP, you can specify the return type in the function signature itself:
public function _getJsonData(): string {
.....
}
At that point, just specifying @return string is fairly pointless, but adding a description of the string might be more useful:
/**
* @return string A string formatted in JSON ready for use with the frobulator
*/
public function _getJsonData(): string {
.....
}