In PHPStorm, how can I make type hinting work when I have a superclass method that returns a different type from each subclass

Question

I have a class that is inheriting from a superclass and where the superclass has a static find() method that instantiates instances of the subclass (active record pattern).

class ActiveRecordClass {

    /**
     * @return mixed
     */
    public static function find() {
        // Code returns instance of called class
    }
}

class ModelClass extends ActiveRecordClass {

}

// returns instance of ModelClass, but PHPStorm doesn't realise
ModelClass::find($model_id); 

At the moment, the docblock is not much good for code completion and type hinting. I can't use the superclass as a return type as the subclasses have different methods due to DB columns.

How can I indicate to PHPStorm that the superclass find() method returns an instance of the subclass it's called from, so that code completion works?

Answer 1

Found it:

class ActiveRecordClass {

    /**
     * @return static
     */
    public static function find() {
        // Code returns instance of called class
    }
}

It seems that @return self vs @return static works the same way that you would expect given what the keywords normally do. @return self did not pick up the methods available on the concrete subclass, but @return static make autocomplete work great.