Syntax

@internal [description]

or inline:

{@internal [description]}

Contrary to other inline tags, the inline version of this tag may contain other inline tags.

Description

The @internal tag indicates that the associated Structural Element is intended only for use within the application, library or package to which it belongs.

Authors MAY use this tag to indicate that an element with public visibility should be regarded as exempt from the API - for example: Library authors MAY regard breaking changes to internal elements as being exempt from semantic versioning. Static analysis tools MAY indicate the use of internal elements from another library/package with a warning or notice.

An additional use of @internal is to add internal comments or additional description text inline to the Description. This may be done, for example, to withhold certain business-critical or confusing information, when generating documentation from the source code of this piece of software.

It is NOT RECOMMENDED to store passwords or security sensitive information in your DocBlock. Not even with this tag.

Effects in phpDocumentor

Structural Elements , or parts of the long description when the tag is used inline, tagged with the @internal tag will be filtered out when creating the HTML output unless the --parseprivate command line argument is used.

The Abstract Syntax Tree will still contain the internal information. Any consumer of this file is responsible for filtering the information correctly.

Examples

Normal tag: Mark the count() function as being internal to this project:

/**
 * @internal
 *
 * @return int Indicates the number of items.
 */
function count()
{
    <...>
}

Inline tag: Include a note in the Description that would only show in Developer Docs:

/**
 * Counts the number of Foo.
 *
 * This method gets a count of the Foo.
 * {@internal Developers should note that it silently
 *            adds one extra Foo (see {@link http://example.com}).}
 *
 * @return int Indicates the number of items.
 */
function count()
{
    <...>
}