What Is the Syntax For Accessing PHP Object Properties

What is the syntax for accessing PHP object properties?

1. $property1 // specific variable
2. $this->property1 // specific attribute

The general use on classes is without "$" otherwise you are calling a variable called $property1 that could take any value.

Example:

class X {
  public $property1 = 'Value 1';
  public $property2 = 'Value 2';
}
$property1 = 'property2';  //Name of attribute 2
$x_object = new X();
echo $x_object->property1; //Return 'Value 1'
echo $x_object->$property1; //Return 'Value 2'

How to access object properties with names like integers or invalid property names?

Updated for PHP 7.2

PHP 7.2 introduced a behavioral change to converting numeric keys in object and array casts, which fixes this particular inconsistency and makes all the following examples behave as expected.

One less thing to be confused about!

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Original answer (applies to versions earlier than 7.2.0)

PHP has its share of dark alleys that you really don't want to find yourself inside. Object properties with names that are numbers is one of them...

What they never told you

Fact #1: You cannot access properties with names that are not legal variable names easily

$a = array('123' => '123', '123foo' => '123foo');
$o = (object)$a;
echo $o->123foo; // error

Fact #2: You can access such properties with curly brace syntax

$a = array('123' => '123', '123foo' => '123foo');
$o = (object)$a;
echo $o->{'123foo'}; // OK!

Fact #3: But not if the property name is all digits!

$a = array('123' => '123', '123foo' => '123foo');
$o = (object)$a;
echo $o->{'123foo'}; // OK!
echo $o->{'123'}; // error!

Live example.

Fact #4: Well, unless the object didn't come from an array in the first place.

$a = array('123' => '123');
$o1 = (object)$a;
$o2 = new stdClass;
$o2->{'123'} = '123'; // setting property is OK

echo $o1->{'123'}; // error!
echo $o2->{'123'}; // works... WTF?

Live example.

Pretty intuitive, don't you agree?

What you can do

Option #1: do it manually

The most practical approach is simply to cast the object you are interested in back into an array, which will allow you to access the properties:

$a = array('123' => '123', '123foo' => '123foo');
$o = (object)$a;
$a = (array)$o;
echo $o->{'123'}; // error!
echo $a['123']; // OK!

Unfortunately, this does not work recursively. So in your case you 'd need to do something like:

$highlighting = (array)$myVar->highlighting;
$data = (array)$highlighting['448364']->Data;
$value = $data['0']; // at last!

Option #2: the nuclear option

An alternative approach would be to write a function that converts objects to arrays recursively:

function recursive_cast_to_array($o) {
    $a = (array)$o;
    foreach ($a as &$value) {
        if (is_object($value)) {
            $value = recursive_cast_to_array($value);
        }
    }

    return $a;
}

$arr = recursive_cast_to_array($myVar);
$value = $arr['highlighting']['448364']['Data']['0'];

However, I 'm not convinced that this is a better option across the board because it will needlessly cast to arrays all of the properties that you are not interested in as well as those you are.

Option #3: playing it clever

An alternative of the previous option is to use the built-in JSON functions:

$arr = json_decode(json_encode($myVar), true);
$value = $arr['highlighting']['448364']['Data']['0'];

The JSON functions helpfully perform a recursive conversion to array without the need to define any external functions. However desirable this looks, it has the "nuke" disadvantage of option #2 and additionally the disadvantage that if there is any strings inside your object, those strings must be encoded in UTF-8 (this is a requirement of json_encode).

What is the correct syntax to access an object property in PHP?

Thank you all. All of the answers above are correct and different ways to fix my original syntax question.

However, I found out that the difference between my WAMP and OSX installations is that in WAMP, the following was required:

curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);

That is why my $obj varible was null in the first place.

Access Object Variables with PHP

When accessing object properties using the -> operator, the property names MUST NOT prepended by a $.

This will work for you:

echo $response->checkout_id;

You can follow the manual

How can I access an object attribute that starts with a number?

What about this :

$Beeblebrox->{'2ndhead'}

Actually, you can do this for pretty much any kind of variable -- even for ones that are not class properties.

For example, you could think about a variable's name that contains spaces ; the following syntax will work :

${"My test var"} = 10;
echo ${"My test var"};

Even if, obviously, you would not be able to do anything like this :

$My test var = 10;
echo $My test var;

No idea how it's working internally, though... And after a bit of searching, I cannot find anything about this in the PHP manual.

Only thing I can find about {} and variables is in here : Variable parsing -- but not quite related to the current subject...

But here's an article that shows a couple of other possiblities, and goes farther than the examples I posted here : PHP Variable Names: Curly Brace Madness

And here's another one that gives some additionnal informations about the way those are parsed : PHP grammar notes

PHP - Get object properties by variable

This is how you can do it:

for ($i = 1; $i <= 20; $i++){
    $propertyName = "bullet$i";
    if ($objectName->$propertyName){
        echo $info->$propertyName;
    }
}

Though I think using an array instead of the object would be a better solution.

PHP: Access Object Properties by String

Finally I have working code.

With mental support from @NigelRen

Emotional support from @FunkFortyNiner

And most of the code from this question about arrays

Test Object:

$obj = json_decode('{"snow":{"elevation":"365.4","results":"6","status":1},"wind":{"elevation":"365.4","windi":"100 mph","windii":"110 mph","windiii":"115 mph","status":1}}');

Test Directory:

$path = 'wind:windii';

Getter:

  function get($path, $obj) {
    $path = explode(':', $path);
    $temp =& $obj;

    foreach($path as $key) {
      $temp =& $temp->{$key};
    }
    return $temp;
  }
  var_dump(get($path, $obj)); //dump to see the result

Setter:

  function set($path, &$obj, $value=null) {
    $path = explode(':', $path);
    $temp =& $obj;

    foreach($path as $key) {
      $temp =& $temp->{$key};
    }

    $temp = $value;
  }
  //Tested with:
  set($path, $obj, '111');

How to access an object property with a minus-sign?

You could try

$object->{'pre-selection'};

http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#language.types.string.parsing.complex

See also Example 2 of json_decode()

Example #2 Accessing invalid object properties

Accessing elements within an object that contain characters not
permitted under PHP's naming convention (e.g. the hyphen) can be
accomplished by encapsulating the element name within braces and the
apostrophe.

<?php

$json = '{"foo-bar": 12345}';

$obj = json_decode($json);
print $obj->{'foo-bar'}; // 12345

?>

Update (thanks to salathe):

Curly braces may also be used, to clearly delimit the property name. They are most useful when accessing values within a property that contains an array, when the property name is made of mulitple parts, or when the property name contains characters that are not otherwise valid

How to access object propety when it has special characters in PHP

You need add the property into "{}".

$b2cUser->{'@odata.nextLink'}

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