Class Literals

Class literal is a special annotation value, which is present in PHP only when using instanceof operator. As a name suggests, this is full class name without quotes.

Main advantage of this data type, is that it considers use statements when evaluating class name, so that short class name can be used.

Example of fully qualified class literal:

...
/**
* @MyAnnotation(MyVendor\MyProject\ClassName)
*/
public $name;
...

The same example with use statement:

...
use MyVendor\MyProject\ClassName;
...
/**
* @MyAnnotation(ClassName)
*/
public $name;
...