Creating Annotations

To make annotation engine recognize annotations and react on them, for each annotation separate class should be created.

Each annotation class name should end with Annotation, however when annotating classes this suffix should be omitted.

This class should extend from MetaAnnotation and must define init() method as well should define propery value with default of null. It is important to define value as it might be later used with ParamsExpander.

It is annotation class responsibility to set entity value

Annotation should set entity value, so that the annotation itself will decide on what to do if it is called multiple time, or how to handle incoming data. When extending from MetaAnnotation, annotation init() method will have available methods for obtaining and working with metadata:

• getEntity() - returns entity on which current annotation is defined - this might be of type:
  • MetaType - containing class (type) metadata, ie annotations defined above class keyword
  • MetaMethod - metadata for method
  • MetaMethod - metadata for property
• getMeta() - returns whole Meta container, allowing to obtain for example type information from method or property annotation.

It is possible to limit where annotation can be placed or which other annotation our annotation should avoid

Example @Label annotation class

namespace Maslosoft\AddendumTest\Annotations;

class LabelAnnotation extends \Maslosoft\Addendum\Collections\MetaAnnotation
{

    public $value;

    public function init()
    {
        $this->getEntity()->label = (string) $this->value;
    }

}

See also this repository and blog post for extra details.