PhpStorm metadata file for repository classes - php

Question

In our application, we use repositories for models that are fetched from the database. So, we have an abstract repository that knows about the database, has a loadById method to load a database record and an abstract getEntity method that creates an object for that specific repository. Example code:
abstract class EntityRepository {
/**
* #param int $id
* #return AbstractEntity
*/
public function loadById($id) {
$record = $this->db->loadById($id);
$entity = $this->getEntity();
return $this->inflate($record, $entity);
}
/**
* #return AbstractEntity
*/
protected abstract function getEntity();
}
class PeopleRepository extends EntityRepository {
protected function getEntity() {
return new PeopleEntity();
}
}
abstract class AbstractEntity {
private $id;
/**
* #return int
*/
public function getId() {
return $this->id;
}
/**
* #param int $id;
*/
public function setId($id) {
$this->id = $id;
}
}
class PeopleEntity extends AbstractEntity {
private $name;
/**
* #return string
*/
public function getName() {
return $this->name;
}
/**
* #param string $name;
*/
public function setName($name) {
$this->name= $name;
}
}
When using an instance of PeopleRepository and fetching a model through loadById, PhpStorm is not able to resolve the returned model to a concrete type, but provides only code completion for the functions of AbstractEntity. Is there any simple way to make it work?
In https://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/PhpStorm/PhpStorm+Advanced+Metadata, I've only found ways to make it work for concrete classes and their functions. So, enumerating all repository classes and all their ways of creating an entity might work. But I'd love to see an abstract way of defining like "All instances of EntityRepository will return an entity of that type defined in getEntity() when loading an entity"

Answer 1

I doubt there's a blanket way of doing this. Even using PHPStorm meta you have to be explicit for each case. Perhaps the way of doing this is by doing something like adding a repository facade e.g.
class RepositoryFacade {
public static function __callStatic($method, $args) {
if ($args[0] == People::class) {
array_shift($args);
return new PeopleRepository()->{$method}(...$args);
}
}
}
Then you might be able to typehint this using:
override(RepositoryFacade::loadById(0), type(0));
Of course the facade is not really the best pattern to be using in general so I can see how this might not be ideal.