PHP: Attribute syntax

Attribute syntax

There are several parts to the attributes syntax. First, attribute declaration are always enclosed with a starting #[ and a corresponding ending ]. Inside, one or many attributes are listed, seperated by comma. The attribute name is an unqualified, qualified or fully-qualified name as described in Using Namespaces Basics. Arguments to the attribute are optional, but are enclosed in the usual parenthesis (). Arguments to attributes can only be literal values or constant expressions. Both positional and named arguments syntax can be used.

Attribute names and their arguments are resolved to a class and the arguments are passed to its constructor, when an instance of the attribute is requested through the Reflection API. As such a class should be introduced for each attribute.

Example #1 Attribute Syntax


<?php
// a.php
namespace MyExample;

use Attribute;

#[Attribute]
class MyAttribute
{
    const VALUE = 'value';

    private $value;

    public function __construct($value = null)
    {
        $this->value = $value;
    }
}

// b.php

namespace Another;

use MyExample\MyAttribute;

#[MyAttribute]
#[\MyExample\MyAttribute]
#[MyAttribute(1234)]
#[MyAttribute(value: 1234)]
#[MyAttribute(MyAttribute::VALUE)]
#[MyAttribute(array("key" => "value"))]
#[MyAttribute(100 + 200)]
class Thing
{
}

#[MyAttribute(1234), MyAttribute(5678)]
class AnotherThing
{
}

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User Contributed Notes 1 note

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yarns dot purport0n at icloud dot com ¶

11 months ago


It wasn't obvious to me for a while but you can subclass attributes

https://3v4l.org/TrMTe

<?php

#[Attribute(Attribute::TARGET_PROPERTY)]
class PropertyAttributes
 {
    public function __construct(
        public readonly ?string $name = null,
        public readonly ?string $label = null,
    ) {}
 }

#[Attribute(Attribute::TARGET_PROPERTY)]
class IntegerPropertyAttributes extends PropertyAttributes
 {
    public function __construct(
        ?string $name = null,
        ?string $label = null,
        public readonly ?int $default = null,
        public readonly ?int $min = null,
        public readonly ?int $max = null,
        public readonly ?int $step = null,
    ) {
        parent::__construct($name, $label);
    }
 }

#[Attribute(Attribute::TARGET_PROPERTY)]
class FloatPropertyAttributes extends PropertyAttributes
 {
    public function __construct(
        ?string $name = null,
        ?string $label = null,
        public readonly ?float $default = null,
        public readonly ?float $min = null,
        public readonly ?float $max = null,
    ) {
        parent::__construct($name, $label);
    }
 }

class MyClass
 {
     #[IntegerPropertyAttributes('prop', 'property: ', 5, 0, 10, 1)]
     public int $prop;
 }

$refl = new ReflectionProperty('MyClass', 'prop');
$attributes = $refl->getAttributes();

    foreach ($attributes as $attribute) {
       var_dump($attribute->getName());
       var_dump($attribute->getArguments());
       var_dump($attribute->newInstance());
    }
?>

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