Be part of JetBrains PHPverse 2026 on June 9 – a free online event bringing PHP devs worldwide together.
I just cloned a repository for a project I was working on. Don't quite remember the specifics of the previous machine it was running on but on this one it's using php 7.1 and I upgraded to Laravel 5.7. The issue is that in my previous machine, this piece of code was working:
class ProductsController extends Controller
{
public function index() : Object
{
$products = Product::all();
return view('products.index', ['products' => $products]);
}
}
Notice the Object return type.
After running migrations and everything else, when accessing index I'm getting the following error in the new machine:
Return value of App\Http\Controllers\ProductsController::index() must be an instance of App\Http\Controllers\Object, instance of Illuminate\View\View returned
which is related to the return type hint being Object. How do I know that? Because if I remove it everything works like charm.
Why is that happening?
Read the documentation - http://php.net/manual/en/functions.returning-values.php
Basically, return and return type should match, in your case they don't. view() is instance of View but you enforced your method to return Object - which isn't right
@SERGIU17 - When I run:
gettype(view('products.index', ['products' => $products]))
i get back 'object'. You're right, view() returns an instance of view which is basically an object. But ok, how do I enforce the return type to be an 'instance of View'? Again, this was working before, not sure why changed so it's breaking now :(
/**
* @return View
*/
public function index(): View
{
$products = Product::all();
return view('products.index', ['products' => $products]);
}
Like so
@SERGIU17 - Nope, that's not going to work, I tried it already and I got the same error:
Return value of App\Http\Controllers\ProductsController::index() must be an instance of App\Http\Controllers\View, instance of Illuminate\View\View returned
@SERGIU17 - Yes sir! That made the trick! Thanks a lot
Please or to participate in this conversation.