QueryBuilder::targetFunc() return type callable fails on PHP 8.3+ with strict type checking

[enlivenapp]

No duplicates 🥲.

• I have searched for a similar issue in our bug tracker and didn't find any solutions.

What happened?

Affected version: v2.15.0 (and 2.x-dev)

File: src/Select/QueryBuilder.php, line 193-210

The problem:

private function targetFunc(string $call): callable           
{                                                  
    // ...
    return [$this->query, $call];
}                                

The method declares callable as its return type but returns [$this->query,
$call]. On PHP 8.3, this throws a TypeError because PHP's stricter type
enforcement no longer accepts all [$object, $method] arrays as callable
without validation at the return type check.

---

  Stack trace:                                                                  
  TypeError: Cycle\ORM\Select\QueryBuilder::targetFunc(): Return value must be
  of type callable, array returned                                              
  File: src/Select/QueryBuilder.php:209    
...                     

Triggered by any ->where() call through a Repository's select().

Correct Fix?: Change the return type from callable to array:
private function targetFunc(string $call): array

Version

ORM v2.15.0 & (2.x dev)
PHP v8.3.6

[roxblnfk]

Hi, thanks for the report — but I think the diagnosis here needs a closer look before we apply the suggested fix.

The premise that PHP 8.3 rejects [$object, $method] arrays as callable is not accurate. The PHP 8.2 deprecation around callables (RFC: Deprecate partially supported callables) only targets partially-supported forms:

• string callables: "self::method", "parent::method", "static::method"
• array callables: ["self", "method"], ["parent", "method"], ["static", "method"], ["Foo", "Bar::method"], [new Foo, "Bar::method"]

The form [$object, 'methodName'] is fully supported and is not deprecated in 8.2, 8.3, 8.4 or 8.5. Returning [$this->query, $call] from a method typed callable is valid as long as the method exists on the object.

This is also consistent with what we see in CI: our test matrix runs on PHP 8.1–8.5, and QueryBuilderTest::testSimpleWhere (which goes through exactly this code path: Select::where() → QueryBuilder::__call() → targetFunc()) is green on all of them. If the basic case really were broken on 8.3, the whole functional suite would fail.

The error message you're seeing — Return value must be of type callable, array returned — is actually triggered when the method name passed to targetFunc() does not exist on SelectQuery (or isn't accessible). At that point PHP fails the callable return-type check because is_callable([$query, $call]) returns false. So the root cause is a bad method name reaching __call, not the type declaration itself.

Changing the return type from callable to array would only mask the problem — call_user_func_array() on the next line would still fail on a non-existent method, just with a different message.

To get to the actual bug, could you share:

1. The full stack trace, including the caller that triggered __call (the frame above QueryBuilder::__call).
2. The exact value of $call at the moment of the failure (e.g. via var_dump($call) right before the return in targetFunc).