How to Check for a Specific Type of Object in PHP

Question

I have a method which accepts a PDO object as an argument, to allow the user to use an existing connection rather then the method to open a new one, and save resources:

Answer 1

use

 bool is_a ( object $object , string $class_name )

This will work for child classes too.

see http://php.net/is-a

EDIT: Or you could use type hinting:

public static function databaseConnect(PDO $pdo = null) {...