Question

I want to migrate code from PHP 5.2 to 5.4. This worked fine so far except that all the code I use makes extensive use of just using an object with a member without any initialisation, like:

$MyObject->MyMember = "Hello";

which results in the warning: “Creating default object from empty value”

I know that the solution would be to use:

$MyObject = new stdClass();
$MyObject->MyMember = "Hello";

but it would be A LOT OF WORK to change this in all my code, because I use this many times in different projects. I know, it’s not good style, but unfortunately I’m not able to spend the next weeks adding this to all of my code.

I know I could set the php error_reporting to not reporting warnings, but I want to be able to still get other warnings and notices. This warning doesn’t seem to be effected by enable or disable E_STRICT at all. So is there a way to just disable this warning?!

Answer 1

Technically you could do this by installing your own error handler for warnings. From inside the handler check the string error message; if it’s the one you want to suppress then return true, otherwise return false to let the default error handler do its thing.

However I would still recommend doing the right thing and manually fixing your code wherever this misuse does appear because, if nothing else, it gets you into the correct habit. Unless this is paid work (in which case there usually are concerns that override purity of implementation), consider this as a lesson and do the right thing.