[FIXED] Is there a type hint for an array of objects of a specific class in PHP 8.1?

Issue

Is there a type hint in PHP 8.1 which allows using ExampleClass[] for declaring it is an array of objects of the class ExampleClass?

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In my specific case, ExampleClass is called Task

What I want but does not work:

private Task[] $tasks;

My PHPStorm IDE tells me that Plural types are allowed only in doc types
- speaking that only in PHPDoc using Tasks[] would be totally fine. But I want to use plain PHP.

The error is: PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected token "[", expecting variable

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If I would only need one object Task and not an array of objects Task[] it would work with:

private Task $task;

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This is my current, working workaround:

private array $tasks;

Solution

The short answer is no.

My understanding is that enforcing such a thing has terrible performance problems. Some people want to go all the way and have full blown generics, others just want type-safe collections. Some people worry that implementing the latter first might hinder the development of the former. So we’re at a standstill.

There’s the occasional discussion in the community such as this: https://externals.io/message/108175

Answered By - Chris Haas