Question

I am working with phpActiveRecord as my ORM. So when I query it spits out objects. My problem is when iterating over the objects with the code I run in some objects that are empty/null or otherwise useless, which throw an exception in the form of a “Notice”, which I know “Notice” isn’t a make a break error, but I don’t like to leave that margin of error in my code. So now Im trying to figure out how I can check to see if something like

$this->object

is empty, null, or otherwise set. I’ve tried

if(!isset($this->object))
if(!empty($this->object))
if(trim($this->object)!=='')

which all break it seems as I’m trying to get a property of a non-object. Which would normally imply to me I am accessing an array over an object, but thats not the case as the same $this->object works for all the results where the object actually has data

Answer 1

if you’re trying to verify the existence of an method use method_exists() or is_callable()

EDIT

indeed, if you need to check a property of an object you can use property_exists()

• http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.is-callable.php
• http://php.net/manual/en/function.method-exists.php
• http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.property-exists.php