Symfony 2.8 Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ':', expecting ';' or '{' in c:\xampp\htdocs\myproject\path\to\AnnotationRegistry.php on line 50

Question

I have downloaded and installed Symfony 2.8 from my own PC. I copied my project and paste it in our companies' pc. I have not created and connected to the database yet. I tried to do php app/console server:run on c:\xampp\htdocs\ninjaz\ but after that I get this error message.

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ':', expecting ';' or '{' in C:\xampp\htdo cs\Ninjaz\vendor\doctrine\annotations\lib\Doctrine\Common\Annotations\Annotation Registry.php on line 50

Edit: My own PC has XAMPP with PHP 7.1. Our company's PC has XAMPP PHP 5.5.19

This is the content of AnnotationRegistry.php:

<?php

namespace Doctrine\Common\Annotations;

final class AnnotationRegistry
{
/**
 * A map of namespaces to use for autoloading purposes based on a PSR-0 convention.
 *
 * Contains the namespace as key and an array of directories as value. If the value is NULL
 * the include path is used for checking for the corresponding file.
 *
 * This autoloading mechanism does not utilize the PHP autoloading but implements autoloading on its own.
 *
 * @var string[][]|string[]|null[]
 */
static private $autoloadNamespaces = [];

/**
 * A map of autoloader callables.
 *
 * @var callable[]
 */
static private $loaders = [];

/**
 * An array of classes which cannot be found
 *
 * @var null[] indexed by class name
 */
static private $failedToAutoload = [];

public static function reset() : void
{
    self::$autoloadNamespaces = [];
    self::$loaders            = [];
    self::$failedToAutoload   = [];
}

/**
 * Registers file.
 *
 * @deprecated this method is deprecated and will be removed in doctrine/annotations 2.0
 *             autoloading should be deferred to the globally registered autoloader by then. For now,
 *             use @example AnnotationRegistry::registerLoader('class_exists')
 */
public static function registerFile(string $file) : void
{
    require_once $file;
}

/**
 * Adds a namespace with one or many directories to look for files or null for the include path.
 *
 * Loading of this namespaces will be done with a PSR-0 namespace loading algorithm.
 *
 * @param string            $namespace
 * @param string|array|null $dirs
 *
 * @deprecated this method is deprecated and will be removed in doctrine/annotations 2.0
 *             autoloading should be deferred to the globally registered autoloader by then. For now,
 *             use @example AnnotationRegistry::registerLoader('class_exists')
 */
public static function registerAutoloadNamespace(string $namespace, $dirs = null) : void
{
    self::$autoloadNamespaces[$namespace] = $dirs;
}

/**
 * Registers multiple namespaces.
 *
 * Loading of this namespaces will be done with a PSR-0 namespace loading algorithm.
 *
 * @param string[][]|string[]|null[] $namespaces indexed by namespace name
 *
 * @deprecated this method is deprecated and will be removed in doctrine/annotations 2.0
 *             autoloading should be deferred to the globally registered autoloader by then. For now,
 *             use @example AnnotationRegistry::registerLoader('class_exists')
 */
public static function registerAutoloadNamespaces(array $namespaces) : void
{
    self::$autoloadNamespaces = \array_merge(self::$autoloadNamespaces, $namespaces);
}

/**
 * Registers an autoloading callable for annotations, much like spl_autoload_register().
 *
 * NOTE: These class loaders HAVE to be silent when a class was not found!
 * IMPORTANT: Loaders have to return true if they loaded a class that could contain the searched annotation class.
 *
 * @deprecated this method is deprecated and will be removed in doctrine/annotations 2.0
 *             autoloading should be deferred to the globally registered autoloader by then. For now,
 *             use @example AnnotationRegistry::registerLoader('class_exists')
 */
public static function registerLoader(callable $callable) : void
{
    // Reset our static cache now that we have a new loader to work with
    self::$failedToAutoload   = [];
    self::$loaders[]          = $callable;
}

/**
 * Autoloads an annotation class silently.
 */
public static function loadAnnotationClass(string $class) : bool
{
    if (\class_exists($class, false)) {
        return true;
    }

    if (\array_key_exists($class, self::$failedToAutoload)) {
        return false;
    }

    foreach (self::$autoloadNamespaces AS $namespace => $dirs) {
        if (\strpos($class, $namespace) === 0) {
            $file = \str_replace('\\', \DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $class) . '.php';

            if ($dirs === null) {
                if ($path = stream_resolve_include_path($file)) {
                    require $path;
                    return true;
                }
            } else {
                foreach((array) $dirs AS $dir) {
                    if (is_file($dir . \DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $file)) {
                        require $dir . \DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $file;
                        return true;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }

    foreach (self::$loaders AS $loader) {
        if ($loader($class) === true) {
            return true;
        }
    }

    self::$failedToAutoload[$class] = null;

    return false;
   }
}

I have managed to get the server running by removing those : void and : bool but when I browse my project, it returns another error and it's the same with the first one but when I try to remove it again, it creates another error on other libraries. It's like an endless error after error scenario. I don't know what to do now. I'm only new to Symfony. Help is badly needed.

Answer 1

This is caused by wrong version of PHP. I had the same issue. You need PHP 7+. PHP in version lower than 7 does not support the "Return Types Declaration".

You can also try to add following code to your composer.json:

{
    "config": {
        "platform": {"php": "5.6"}
    }
}