Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:49742
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain gmail.com designates 209.85.216.177 as permitted sender)
DomainKey-Status: bad
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws;
        d=gmail.com; s=gamma;
        h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type;
        b=w/y17gTaZGz9c4E2FYSVpndAxpZyNYiV3tXo7lkqFpWTvhTBBjQmFCk0e27yZWH0/I
         QAoYu7ZW6Dy4buRbMwR2bGA5By4J5vXwemvIjV1PQ0yPyjM85ujBOWwGMda/TP1H3UN/
         aKlZ2iAbc8nCOFQEaWUCjDt5HNIImkuBBKWak=
MIME-Version: 1.0
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 18:28:56 -0700
Message-ID: <AANLkTikfOPz4K+HMHZDz+_0xuhuRCwSyDxgMMFmgfwtz@mail.gmail.com>
To: PHP Developers Mailing List <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Subject: Annotations Alternative?
From: ssufficool@gmail.com (Stanley Sufficool)

After reading a little of this back and forth of annotations,
validation and documentation (oh my). I thought, why not just abstract
the standard types (string, int, bool, etc...) to SPL classes.

This would allow for validation, documentation, casting, and related
functions ( length, substr, etc...) to be encapsulated in the class,
rather than in some new language construct.

This is a bit .NETish, but each instance of a variable/class could
have its own description ($int->description), constructor with built
in validation ( $int = new Int32('123456') ) and casting/conversion (
$str = new String('12345'); $int32 = $str ).

For custom validation, maybe: $int = new Int32(); $int->validate =
function($value) { return $value < 100 && $value > 5; }; $int->value =
105; /* Throws error */

Parsers should be able to grab validations and description from the code.

This also will solve some peoples wishes for strict typing as:
function foo(String $arg1, Int32 $arg2, $arg3);

This is more overhead. But it is elective for those who wish to use
it. It won't burden existing application performance. And it doesn't
require learning another construct.