how to create a php class which can be casted to boolean (be truthy or falsy)

Question

I am creating a collection class and would like it to be drop-in-replacement for arrays, which I use currently.

How to create a class which could be casted

Answer 1

If you don't want to implement your own method you could hack your way into __toString, like this:

class foo
{
    public function __toString()
    {
        return strval(false);
    }
}

$foo = new foo();

if (strval($foo) == false) // non-strict comparison
{
   echo '$foo is falsy';
}

echo (bool) strval($foo); // false