Documenting return types

[ajaxStardust]

Salutations!

Since discovering PHPStan, I've been going through my code and adding PHPDoc comments as needed, as reported by PHPStan.

What is the correct way to document a return type, when That report is based on \Class::method() being commented as:
/** * method * * @param mixed $user_id * @return null */
PHPStan reports errors like the following:

Method Namespace\Class::method() should return null but returns false.

...then:
/** * method * * @param mixed $user_id * @return */
Method Namespace\Class::method() should return null but empty return statement found.

Changing the PHPDoc comment to the following results in PHPStan reporting a different error:
/** * method * * @param mixed $user_id * @return void */

Method with return type void returns false but should not return anything.

So what is the correct way to document the return to satisfy PHPStan?
Edit: Note, i'm using the Visual Studio Code extension, https://github.com/shishirui/phpdoc-comment-vscode-plugin
to assist in adding the PHPDoc comments. It is suggesting the comment be placed as "@return void", as in the 3rd example above.

Thank you!

[ondrejmirtes]

Please reproduce your issues on phpstan.org/try.

also make sure to check the docs:

• https://phpstan.org/writing-php-code/phpdocs-basics
• https://phpstan.org/writing-php-code/phpdoc-types

and also PHP docs because for what you want you might not need PHPDocs at all, just native return types.

[ajaxStardust]

Hey there. I don't know how I missed your advisory here. I'll do my best to contribute by following through with this. It's a pretty old project (considering my activities meanwhile), but I still use PHPStan when I'm struggling with something!

While I have you. I had been playing around with having PHPStan pipe the output to... i was going to say
user@linuxtree, but that doesn't seem right. so, i guess i forget. Don't have time to research that today, but long story short: the processes output an XML file of the report. lol. not sure why i needed-- rather, wanted-- it in that format. Experimenting w/ PHP and XML data files at the time. Do you happen to have a link to point me in the right direction for using command line to send PHPStan > some.xml file that I could later use the PHP XML classes to play around w/ the report results?

Perhaps I could use revisiting the XML thing as an opportunity to reproduce at phpstan.org/try

@ondrejmirtes
Thank you, graciously!

[ondrejmirtes]

https://phpstan.org/user-guide/output-format

https://phpstan.org/developing-extensions/error-formatters