Solving PHPStan error “Unable to resolve the template type”

January 13, 2021 · 2 min read

This problem is reported by PHPStan on level 6 when calling a generic method or function. Generic methods and functions declare so-called template types (also known as type variables) via @template PHPDoc tags.

The return type of a generic function depends on input arguments. Let’s take this example:

/**
 * @template T
 * @param T[] $arg
 * @return T|null
 */
function firstOrNull(array $arg)
{
    // ...
}

The function takes an input array and will return the first element in case the array is not empty.

PHPStan needs to resolve what T is when calling the function. If it’s not able to do it, it will report “Unable to resolve the template type T in call to function firstOrNull”.

For example, when mixed is passed to the function, it’s not considered an argument type error, but because a generic function is called, the expectation is that T will be something concrete. To prevent mixed to be propagated further down the line, PHPStan reports this error and wants the user to pass a more specific argument to the function. So instead of mixed, it wants an array of elements so that it can extract T from it, like an array of integers int[] will resolve T to be int.

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