Question

As the description states, I have a function that takes in an array and an object as arguments and assigns all of the objects fields to their respective values in the array depending on the type of the object. The objects all have different fields, but they all have a type attribute which the function uses to determine which fields to assign.

It works something like this:

function unload($arr,&$obj){ <-- //&$obj not $obj
  if($obj->type == 'A'){
    echo 'Setting field for A';
    $obj->a = $arr['a_value'];
    //some more assignments..
  }
  elseif($obj->type == 'B'){
    $obj->b = $arr['b_value'];
    echo 'Setting field for B';
    //some more assignments...
  }
  //some more elseifs
  //return an error if
  //object's type doesn't
  //match
  else{
    echo 'Error: Object type '.$obj->type.' not recognized.';
  }

}

$arr['a_value'] = 'SomeValue';
$arr['b_value'] = 'SomeOtherValue';
$obj = new A(); //A's type set to 'A' upon initialization
unload($arr,$obj);
echo 'A->a set to:  '.$obj->a;

Output:
A->a set to:

The code enters the correct branch for the object that is passed in but none of the object’s fields get assigned. What am I doing wrong?

The server is running PHP 4.4.7, I still have no idea what’s causing this.

Edit: I FINALLY figured it out, it was a combination of 2 things:

I didn’t realize the $this keyword was required when referencing class field names from within the class. I assumed the variables had global scope so $this was optional like it is in Java. This is why just changing the function declaration didn’t fix the problem. Now everything works fine!

Answer 1

Which PHP version are you on?

Because in PHP4 you need to explicitly pass the object by reference:

function unload($arr,&$obj){

If otherwise you are on PHP5, double check your $arr contents. And do some print_r inside and outside the function …