[php] Cannot use string offset as an array in php

I'm trying to simulate this error with a sample php code but haven't been successful. Any help would be great.

"Cannot use string offset as an array"

I believe what are you asking about is a variable interpolation in PHP.

Let's do a simple fixture:

$obj = (object) array('foo' => array('bar'), 'property' => 'value');
$var = 'foo';

Now we have an object, where:

print_r($obj);

Will give output:

stdClass Object
    (
        [foo] => Array
            (
                [0] => bar
            )

        [property] => value
    )

And we have variable $var containing string "foo".

If you'll try to use:

$give_me_foo = $obj->$var[0];

Instead of:

$give_me_foo = $obj->foo[0];

You get "Cannot use string offset as an array [...]" error message as a result, because what you are trying to do, is in fact sending message $var[0] to object $obj. And - as you can see from fixture - there is no content of $var[0] defined. Variable $var is a string and not an array.

What you can do in this case is to use curly braces, which will assure that at first is called content of $var, and subsequently the rest of message-sent:

$give_me_foo = $obj->{$var}[0];

The result is "bar", as you would expect.

I was fighting a similar problem, so documenting here in case useful.

In a __get() method I was using the given argument as a property, as in (simplified example):

function __get($prop) {
     return $this->$prop;
}

...i.e. $obj->fred would access the private/protected fred property of the class.

I found that when I needed to reference an array structure within this property it generated the Cannot use String offset as array error. Here's what I did wrong and how to correct it:

function __get($prop) {
     // this is wrong, generates the error
     return $this->$prop['some key'][0];
}

function __get($prop) {
     // this is correct
     $ref = & $this->$prop;
     return $ref['some key'][0];
}

Explanation: in the wrong example, php is interpreting ['some key'] as a key to $prop (a string), whereas we need it to dereference $prop in place. In Perl you could do this by specifying with {} but I don't think this is possible in PHP.

When you directly print print_r(($value['<YOUR_ARRAY>']-><YOUR_OBJECT>)); then it shows this fatal error Cannot use string offset as an object in. If you print like this

$var = $value['#node']-><YOU_OBJECT>; print_r($var);

You won't get the error!!

Since the release PHP 7.1+, is not more possible to assign a value for an array as follow:

$foo = ""; 
$foo['key'] = $foo2; 

because as of PHP 7.1.0, applying the empty index operator on a string throws a fatal error. Formerly, the string was silently converted to an array.

I was able to reproduce this once I upgraded to PHP 7. It breaks when you try to force array elements into a string.

$params = '';
foreach ($foo) {
  $index = 0;
  $params[$index]['keyName'] = $name . '.' . $fileExt;
}

After changing:

$params = '';

to:

$params = array();

I stopped getting the error. I found the solution in this bug report thread. I hope this helps.

I just want to explain my solving for the same problem.

my code before(given same error):

$arr2= ""; // this is the problem and solve by replace this $arr2 = array();
for($i=2;$i<count($arrdata);$i++){
    $rowx = explode(" ",$arrdata[$i]);
    $arr1= ""; // and this is too
    for($x=0;$x<count($rowx);$x++){
        if($rowx[$x]!=""){
            $arr1[] = $rowx[$x];
        }
    }
    $arr2[] = $arr1;
}
for($i=0;$i<count($arr2);$i++){
    $td .="<tr>";
    for($j=0;$j<count($hcol)-1;$j++){
        $td .= "<td style='border-right:0px solid #000'>".$arr2[$i][$j]."</td>"; //and it's($arr2[$i][$j]) give an error: Cannot use string offset as an array
    }
    $td .="</tr>";
}

my code after and solved it:

$arr2= array(); //change this from $arr2="";
for($i=2;$i<count($arrdata);$i++){
    $rowx = explode(" ",$arrdata[$i]);
    $arr1=array(); //and this
    for($x=0;$x<count($rowx);$x++){
        if($rowx[$x]!=""){
            $arr1[] = $rowx[$x];
        }
    }
    $arr2[] = $arr1;
}
for($i=0;$i<count($arr2);$i++){
    $td .="<tr>";
    for($j=0;$j<count($hcol)-1;$j++){
        $td .= "<td style='border-right:0px solid #000'>".$arr2[$i][$j]."</td>";
    }
    $td .="</tr>";
}

Thank's. Hope it's helped, and sorry if my english mess like boy's room :D

The error occurs when:

$a = array(); 
$a['text1'] = array();
$a['text1']['text2'] = 'sometext';

Then

echo $a['text1']['text2'];     //Error!!

Solution

$b = $a['text1'];
echo $b['text2'];    // prints: sometext

..

I had this error for the first time ever while trying to debug some old legacy code, running now on PHP 7.30. The simplified code looked like this:

$testOK = true;

if ($testOK) {
    $x['error'][] = 0;
    $x['size'][] = 10;
    $x['type'][] = 'file';
    $x['tmp_name'][] = 'path/to/file/';
}

The simplest fix possible was to declare $x as array() before:

$x = array();

if ($testOK) {
    // same code
}

I was having this error and a was nuts

my code was

$aux_users='';

foreach ($usuarios['a'] as $iterador) { 
#code
if ( is_numeric($consultores[0]->ganancia) ) {
    $aux_users[$iterador]['ganancia']=round($consultores[0]->ganancia,2);
  }
}

after changing $aux_users=''; to $aux_users=array();

it happen to my in php 7.2 (in production server!) but was working on php 5.6 and php 7.0.30 so be aware! and thanks to Young Michael, i hope it helps you too!