Question

I have an object as this:

object(stdClass)#27 (1)
{
    [0] => object(stdClass)#26 (6)
    {
        ["_id"] => object(MongoId)#24 (1)
        {
            ["$id"] => string(24) "4e6ea439caa47c2c0c000000" 
        }
        ["username"] => string(16) "wdfkewkghbrjkghb"
        ["email"]=> string(24) "wdhbfjkwhegerg@€rg.efg"
        ["password"]=> string(32) "4297f44b13955235245b2497399d7a93"
        ["slug"]=> string(16) "wdfkewkghbrjkghb"
        ["insert_datetime"]=> string(19) "2011-09-13 12:09:49" 
    } 

} 

I assign this object to $user.

I can’t get access on this object properties doing $user->username cause I receive the message:

Undefined property: stdClass::$username

Then if I do var_dump(get_object_vars($user)) it returns an empty array.

How do I grab the properties? I don’t want to use loops if I can avoid it.

---

The process is this:

1. Retrieve results from mongo_db:

   $returns = array();
   
   while ($documents->hasNext())
   {
       if ($this->CI->config->item('mongo_return') == 'object')
       {
           $returns[] = (object) $documents->getNext();    
       }
   
       if ($this->CI->config->item('mongo_return') == 'array')
       {
           $returns[] = (array) $documents->getNext();
       }
   }
   
   if ($this->CI->config->item('mongo_return') == 'object')
   {
       return (object)$returns;
   }
   
   
   if ($this->CI->config->item('mongo_return') == 'array')
   {
       return $returns;
   }
   

2. passing data to model

   function populateBy($what = false) {
       return $this->mongo_db
                   ->where($what)
                   ->get($this->tb['users']);
   }
   

3. definitely grab results in controller:

   $what = array(
       'email'=>$email,
       'password'=>$password,
       'confirm'=>'1'
   );
   
   $user  = $this->model_user->populateBy($what);
   

Answer 1

As gilden says, the property you’re looking for is a property of a subobject. However, he missed that object property access is not the same as array element access.

The real problem you’re facing here is that you’ve converted an array to object, and now you have a numeric property name. To get to properties you have to use syntax like $user->0->username, but clearly this is not valid as 0 is not a valid variable name.

From the documentation:

If an object is converted to an array, the result is an array whose
elements are the object’s properties. The keys are the member variable
names, with a few notable exceptions: integer properties are
unaccessible [sic]; private variables have the class name prepended to the
variable name; protected variables have a ‘*’ prepended to the
variable name. These prepended values have null bytes on either side.
This can result in some unexpected behaviour:

The function get_object_vars converts back into an array again so that it appears to work, but in fact anything could happen: the behaviour is unspecified because the object elements were rendered inaccessible in the intermediate stage. Similarly, $user->{'0'}->username may work for you but I would avoid it.

Unfortunately this means that you’ll have to change the way your code works: do not convert a numerically-indexed array to an object.