Can I use an instantiated Object as an Array Key?

Question

For example:

$product = new Product(\"cat\");

if(isset($sales[$product])){
     $sales[$product]++;
}
else{
     $sales[$product] = 1;
}

Answer 1

You can use http://www.php.net/manual/en/class.splobjectstorage.php

$product = new Product("cat");
$sales = new SplObjectStorage();
if(isset($sales[$product])){
     $sales[$product]++;
}
else{
     $sales[$product] = 1;
}

It's not a real array, but has a decent amount of array-like functionality and syntax. However, due to it being an object, it behaves like a misfit in php due to its odd foreach behavior, and its incompatibility with all the native php array functions. Sometimes you'll find it useful to convert it to a real array via

$arr = iterator_to_array($sales);

so it plays nice with the rest of your codebase.