PHP check whether property exists in object or class

Question

I understand PHP does not have a pure object variable, but I want to check whether a property is in the given object or class.

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Answer 1

Solution

echo $person->middleName ?? 'Person does not have a middle name';

To show how this would look in an if statement for more clarity on how this is working.

if($person->middleName ?? false) {
    echo $person->middleName;
} else {
    echo 'Person does not have a middle name';
}

Explanation

The traditional PHP way to check for something's existence is to do:

if(isset($person->middleName)) {
    echo $person->middleName;
} else {
    echo 'Person does not have a middle name';
}

OR for a more class specific way:

if(property_exists($person, 'middleName')) {
    echo $person->middleName;
} else {
    echo 'Person does not have a middle name';
}

These are both fine in long form statements but in ternary statements they become unnecessarily cumbersome like so:

isset($person->middleName) ? echo $person->middleName : echo 'Person does not have a middle name';

You can also achieve this with just the ternary operator like so:

echo $person->middleName ?: 'Person does not have a middle name';

But... if the value does not exist (is not set) it will raise an E_NOTICE and is not best practise. If the value is null it will not raise the exception.

Therefore ternary operator to the rescue making this a neat little answer:

echo $person->middleName ?? 'Person does not have a middle name';

Answer 2

Neither isset or property_exists work for me.

• isset returns false if the property exists but is NULL.
• property_exists returns true if the property is part of the object's class definition, even if it has been unset.

I ended up going with:

    $exists = array_key_exists($property, get_object_vars($obj));

Example:

    class Foo {
        public $bar;

        function __construct() {
            $property = 'bar';

            isset($this->$property); // FALSE
            property_exists($this, $property); // TRUE
            array_key_exists($property, get_object_vars($this)); // TRUE

            unset($this->$property);

            isset($this->$property); // FALSE
            property_exists($this, $property); // TRUE
            array_key_exists($property, get_object_vars($this)); // FALSE

            $this->$property = 'baz';

            isset($this->$property); // TRUE
            property_exists($this, $property); // TRUE
            array_key_exists($property, get_object_vars($this));  // TRUE
        }
    }