How to check that an object is empty in PHP?

Question

How to find if an object is empty or not in PHP.

Following is the code in which $obj is holding XML data. How can I check if it\'s empty or not?

Answer 1

there's no unique safe way to check if an object is empty

php's count() first casts to array, but casting can produce an empty array, depends by how the object is implemented (extensions' objects are often affected by those issues)

in your case you have to use $obj->count();

http://it.php.net/manual/en/simplexmlelement.count.php

(that is not php's count http://www.php.net/count )