Custom suggestions/completion in PHP function from JSON file in PhpStorm

Question

I have a translate("") function and I want PhpStorm to start suggesting values from a JSON file when I start typing between the quotes.

The idea is that I have a JSON file with translation strings and when I start typing it should suggest translations which are already included in that json file, based on the characters I already typed of course.

After some research, I do not think this is currently possible in PhpStorm, but maybe someone here has an idea or an alternative.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I made it work using PhpStorm advanced metadata.

I created a .phpstorm.meta.php file in the project root, this will add auto completion/suggestions for the first (0) argument of the translate method:

<?php

namespace PHPSTORM_META {
    expectedArguments(
        \App\Helper\TranslationHelper::translate(),
        0,
        /* Generated */
        "Auto completion result",
        "This is also a suggested result",
        "Give me more suggestions PhpStorm",
        /* Generated */
    );
}

And then wrote a Symfony command that takes strings from my translation file and includes them between the two /* Generated */ comments:

$translations = json_decode(file_get_contents($this->parameterBag->get('app.project.path') . '/resources/translations/de.json'), true);

$metadataPath = $this->parameterBag->get('app.project.path') . '/.phpstorm.meta.php';
$identifier = "/* Generated */";
$regexIdentifier = $this->escape($identifier);
$regex = "/$regexIdentifier(.*?)$regexIdentifier/s";

// Build the arguments string that will be written into the metadata file
$translationsAsArguments = "$identifier\n";
foreach ($translations as $translation) {
    $translationsAsArguments .= "\t\t\"$translation\",\n";
}
$translationsAsArguments .= "\t\t$identifier";

// Write to disk
$translationsMetadata = preg_replace($regex, $translationsAsArguments, file_get_contents($metadataPath));
file_put_contents($metadataPath, $translationsMetadata);

This solution was written with PHP using Symfony 6.3

The suggestions will look like this in the IDE: