Question

I have a method in a codeigniter controller which is sometimes called through the url and sometimes called internally from another method of the controller. When I call it internally I pass an array of arguments. Simplified version of method:

(within a controller)

function get_details($args='') {

    if (isset($args['first_name'])) 
    {
        $first_name = $args['first_name'];
    } 
    else
    {
        $first_name = $this->uri->segment(3);
    } 

    ... do some other stuff ...

}

The method is either called as:

<domain>/<controller>/get_details/abcd/efgh 

or from another function of the controller as:

$this->get_details(array('first_name'=>'abcd', 'last_name'=>'efgh'));

I was expecting that when the method was called through the url, isset($args[‘first_name’]) would be false, however it seems that called in this way the argument is there. I tried printing a couple of things and this is what I got:

print_r($args)  ---->   abcd

echo($args['first_name'])  ----> a

echo($args['whatever_index_I_use'])  ----> a  

It seems like the third parameter of the url is being passed into the method (by codeigniter?), but can’t work out why the array indexes seem to be set, all I can think is that php is converting the string to an int, so $args['whatever_index_I_use'], becomes $args[0]??

Not sure if this is a codeigniter thing or me missing a subtlety of php.

Much appreciate anyone who can explain what’s going on.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I don’t know if this is a bug or a expected behavior, but in the Strings docs there’s a comment that show exactly what are you experiencing. If you use a text and index of the string it will return the first char. To avoid it, check first if the argument is an array or a string:

if(is_array($args)) {
    echo($args['first_name']);
}