# CakePHP 2 Auto Complete for phpStorm or recommended IDE

**URL:** <https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/cakephp-2-auto-complete-for-phpstorm-or-recommended-ide/1775>\
**Category:** Need Help\
**Created:** [December 26, 2016, 2:41pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/cakephp-2-auto-complete-for-phpstorm-or-recommended-ide/1775 "2016-12-26T14:41:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![trevrobwhite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/858c86/32.png) [@trevrobwhite](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/trevrobwhite)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2016, 2:41pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/cakephp-2-auto-complete-for-phpstorm-or-recommended-ide/1775/1 "2016-12-26T14:41:29Z")

</div>

Hi all,  
I’m new to CakePHP come from tradional style but I’m working with an open source company on some plugins in CakePHP.

There code isn’t very well documented which can be a problem to find the functions I need. I’ve been looking at phpStorm as it’s the only IDE which seems to understand cake (in the past I’ve used Netbeans).

However even phpStorm is only finding a fraction of the functions and inside plugin commands and tasks it finds none.

Does anyone know a way to improve this? I don’t really want to modify there code but I’ve asked the company to run [https://github.com/mfn/cakephp2-magic-properties](https://github.com/mfn/cakephp2-magic-properties) this has discovered some of the functions.

I’ve also installed [https://github.com/vexus2/CakeStorm](https://github.com/vexus2/CakeStorm) so I can jump into the models and controllers.

Is there anything more I can do to hunt out the functions (including the cake magic functions) or a better IDE (even at a cost).

For me it saves so much time in frustration to see all the functions/methods of the $this

Thanks in advance for any advice.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![alvaro](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.cakephp.org/alvaro/32/70_2.png) [@alvaro](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/alvaro)\
**Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 10:33am UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/cakephp-2-auto-complete-for-phpstorm-or-recommended-ide/1775/2 "2016-12-30T10:33:41Z")

</div>

The main issue is that the IDE has no way to detect magic attributes and methods because that’s outside the possibilities of static analysis. Adding docblocks helps a lot with any decent IDE, e.g.:

- In a view:

- In a controller:

Etc.