When should I use stdClass and when should I use an array in php oo code?

Question

In the middle of a period of big refactorings at work, I wish to introduce stdClass ***** as a way to return data from functions and I\'m trying to find non-subjectives argu

Answer 1

I find stdClass objects over arrays useful when I need to keep my code clean and somewhat sentence-like readable. Take for example function getProperties() which returns a set of properties, say data about a person (name, age, sex). If getProperties() would return an associative array, when you want to use one of the returned properties, you would write two instructions:

$data = getProperties();
echo $data['name'];

On the other hand, if getProperties() returns a stdClass then you could write that in just one instruction:

echo getProperties()->name;