[php] PHP check whether property exists in object or class

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.

$ob = (object) array('a' => 1, 'b' => 12); 

or

$ob = new stdClass;
$ob->a = 1;
$ob->b = 2;

In JS, I can write this to check if variable a exists in an object:

if ('a' in ob)

In PHP, can anything like this be done?

Thank you very much for your advice.

Using array_key_exists() on objects is Deprecated in php 7.4

Instead either isset() or property_exists() should be used

reference : php.net

To check if something exits, you can use the PHP function isset() see php.net. This function will check if the variable is set and is not NULL.

Example:

if(isset($obj->a))
{ 
  //do something
}

If you need to check if a property exists in a class, then you can use the build in function property_exists()

Example:

if (property_exists('class', $property)) {
    //do something
}

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';

If you want to know if a property exists in an instance of a class that you have defined, simply combine property_exists() with isset().

public function hasProperty($property)
{
    return property_exists($this, $property) && isset($this->$property);
}

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
        }
    }

Just putting my 2 cents here.

Given the following class:

class Foo
{
  private $data;

  public function __construct(array $data)
  {
    $this->data = $data;
  }

  public function __get($name)
  {
    return $data[$name];
  }

  public function __isset($name)
  {
    return array_key_exists($name, $this->data);
  }
}

the following will happen:

$foo = new Foo(['key' => 'value', 'bar' => null]);

var_dump(property_exists($foo, 'key'));  // false
var_dump(isset($foo->key));  // true
var_dump(property_exists($foo, 'bar'));  // false
var_dump(isset($foo->bar));  // true, although $data['bar'] == null

Hope this will help anyone

To check if the property exists and if it's null too, you can use the function property_exists().

Docs: http://php.net/manual/en/function.property-exists.php

As opposed with isset(), property_exists() returns TRUE even if the property has the value NULL.

bool property_exists ( mixed $class , string $property )

Example:

if (property_exists($testObject, $property)) {
    //do something
}