Reconstituting a DocBlock

ReflectionDocBlock not only allows you to read and parse DocBlocks, but also to reconstruct them. This is useful if you need to add, remove, or modify tags in your codebase programmatically. For example, you might want to update type information, add custom tags, or strip deprecated tags as part of a refactoring or code generation process.

Below is a practical example of how to reconstitute a DocBlock using this library:

<?php

require_once(__DIR__ . '/../../vendor/autoload.php');

use phpDocumentor\Reflection\DocBlock\Serializer;
use phpDocumentor\Reflection\DocBlockFactory;

$docComment = <<<DOCCOMMENT
/**
 * This is an example of a summary.
 *
 * And here is an example of the description
 * of a DocBlock that can span multiple lines.
 *
 * @see \phpDocumentor\Reflection\DocBlock\StandardTagFactory
 */
DOCCOMMENT;

$factory  = DocBlockFactory::createInstance();
$docblock = $factory->create($docComment);

// Create the serializer that will reconstitute the DocBlock back to its original form.
$serializer = new Serializer(0, '', true, null, null, PHP_EOL);

// Reconstitution is performed by the `getDocComment()` method.
$reconstitutedDocComment = $serializer->getDocComment($docblock);