Description

The {@inheritdoc} inline tag is used in the DocBlocks of classes, methods and class variables of child classes. phpDocumentor will automatically inherit the @author tag, @version tag, and @copyright tag from a parent class. In addition, if there is no documentation comment present, it will inherit the parent's documentation.

Note that if the {@inheritdoc} inline tag is not present, and a child class is undocumented, the child class will still attempt to inherit documentation from the parent class as is. {@inheritdoc} allows flexibility of where to put documentation from the parent class in a child class's documentation.

Example

In some cases, the child class may want to simply augment the parent class's documentation. This is the primary purpose {@inheritdoc} was designed for. For example:

1. /**
2.  * Makes bars
3.  *
4.  * This class generates bars using the main algorithm.
5.  */
6. class bar
7. {
8. }
9.  
10. /**
11.  * Makes chocolate bars
12.  *
13.  * There are two aspects to this class.
14.  * {@inheritdoc }  In addition, the foo class
15.  * makes the bars chocolate
16.  */
17. class foo extends bar
18. {
19. }

This source code will parse as if it was:

1. /**
2.  * Makes bars
3.  *
4.  * Generates bars using the main algorithm.
5.  */
6. class bar
7. {
8. }
9.  
10. /**
11.  * Makes chocolate bars
12.  *
13.  * There are two aspects to this class.
14.  * This class generates bars using the main algorithm.  In addition, the foo class
15.  * makes the bars chocolate
16.  */
17. class foo extends bar
18. {
19. }