Question

I am getting the following error from the method presented below:

Notice: Uninitialized string offset: 5 in /path/to/file.php on line 30 Fatal error: Cannot access empty property in path/to/file.php on line 30

private function parse($xml, $index = '') {
    echo count($xml->children()); //outputs 6
    $count = 0;
    foreach ($xml->children() as $key => $value) {

        $this->$key[$count] = array();
        $count++;

    }

}

Any ideas why if I build an multi-dimensional in this way it results in an error?

If I change the assignment to:

$this->$key = array($count = > array());

This simply re-assigns the property each loop.
Thanks
Rich

Answer 1

Imagine you’ve got a string:

$string = 'abc`;

Doing substring access (which looks like array) will return you the character:

echo $string[2]; # c

Or you get your error when you’re out of the index:

echo $string[3]; # null + warning

So now accessing a member of your object $this dynamically:

$this->$string[2]; # access $this->c

However this one breaks hardly:

$this->$string[3]; # access $this->null (not possible)

This gives you your fatal error of an empty property, a property with no name.

This explain what happens in your code, you have not told what you’re trying to do so I hope this information will help you to continue with writing your parse function.