The ReflectionDocBlock Component [![Build Status](https://secure.travis-ci.org/phpDocumentor/ReflectionDocBlock.png)](https://travis-ci.org/phpDocumentor/ReflectionDocBlock)
================================

Introduction
------------

The ReflectionDocBlock component of phpDocumentor provides a DocBlock parser
that is 100% compatible with the [PHPDoc standard](http://phpdoc.org/docs/latest).

With this component, a library can provide support for annotations via DocBlocks
or otherwise retrieve information that is embedded in a DocBlock.

> **Note**: *this is a core component of phpDocumentor and is constantly being
> optimized for performance.*

Installation
------------

You can install the component in the following ways:

* Use the official Github repository (https://github.com/phpDocumentor/ReflectionDocBlock)
* Via Composer (http://packagist.org/packages/phpdocumentor/reflection-docblock)

Usage
-----

In order to parse the DocBlock one needs a DocBlockFactory that can be
instantiated using its `createInstance` factory method like this:

```php
$factory  = \phpDocumentor\Reflection\DocBlockFactory::createInstance();
```

Then we can use the `create` method of the factory to interpret the DocBlock. 
Please note that it is also possible to provide a class that has the 
`getDocComment()` method, such as an object of type `ReflectionClass`, the
create method will read that if it exists.

```php
$docComment = <<<DOCCOMMENT
/**
 * This is an example of a summary.
 *
 * This is a Description. A Summary and Description are separated by either
 * two subsequent newlines (thus a whiteline in between as can be seen in this
 * example), or when the Summary ends with a dot (`.`) and some form of
 * whitespace.
 */
DOCCOMMENT;

$docblock = $factory->create($docComment);
```

The `create` method will yield an object of type `\phpDocumentor\Reflection\DocBlock`
whose methods can be queried as shown in the following example.

```php
// Should contain the summary for this DocBlock
$summary = $docblock->getSummary();

// Contains an object of type \phpDocumentor\Reflection\DocBlock\Description; 
// you can either cast it to string or use the render method to get a string 
// representation of the Description.
$description = $docblock->getDescription();
```

> For more examples it would be best to review the scripts in the `/examples` 
> folder.