Type hinting: bool or boolean

[VijitCoder]

The sniffer makes a pretty strange requirement. He is always want to see the boolean as a type hint. But, at the same time PHP 7.1 supports only bool as a type hinting. So, to make everyone happy I need to write the hinting in two versions:

   /**
     * Some comment here
     *
     * @return boolean
     */
    public function isUserActive(): bool
    {
        return false;
    }

This is weird from the coding viewpoint.

Here is a discussion about the right hinting https://stackoverflow.com/a/44009101/5497749

[gsherwood]

The error message comes from a particular coding standard that enforces that convention. Those standards have not been updated in a while (the PEAR one probably never will be) so there isn't a lot you can do without either writing your own sniff to enforce the rules you want, or finding a sniff someone else has written.

I do intend on changing the Squiz standard, so I'll leave this open as a reminder.

[natanfelles]

Same for integer, see: codeigniter4/coding-standard#22 . Thank you! 😃

[louisl]

Just throwing an idea out there:

Could this be as simple as changing the switch case in Common->suggestType() and adding an optional strict param for backwards compatibility. We could then add a $strictType to commenting sniffs that use it that can be set in the ruleset config?

Something like this.

https://gist.github.com/louisl/a1e0fe4fc1ab33b1369f37f8052585e0

[TomasVotruba]

Coding standard can break typehints in many ways, since they don't know the context of parent/child files:

 <?php

 final class SuperCoolSniff implements Sniff
 {
     /**
      * @param int $position
      */
-    public function process(File $file, $position)
+    public function process(File $file, int $position)
     {
         // ...
     }
 }

It's better to use AST for this in tools like Retor instead of token_get_all(): https://www.tomasvotruba.cz/blog/2018/12/10/rocket-science-behind-migration-of-docblock-types-to-php-typehints/

[jrfnl]

The adding of an optional parameter to the suggestType() method to allow it to return "short form", rather than "long form" will be sorted in #2189.

[ElvenSpellmaker]

This still needs fixing for PHP > 7 BTW, much like how it's (almost) fixed for Params. @gsherwood

[filips123]

I created PR #3139 to allow using short forms of type keywords using useShortTypes property on relevant sniffs.