Question

I’m calling an API and handling a JSON response which is then decoded into a stdObject. Then I’m inserting the record into the db with either the value or NULL. However I’m finding my request doesn’t always come back with a value

Example:

[1] => stdClass Object
(
    [created_at] => Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:58:47 +0000
    [entities] => stdClass Object
        (
        )

    [from_user] => powpowpow
    [from_user_id] => 12345
    [from_user_id_str] => 12345
    [geo] => 
    [location] => UK
    [id] => 1245
    [id_str] => 12345
    [iso_language_code] => en
    [metadata] => stdClass Object
        (
            [result_type] => recent
        )

    [profile_image_url] => http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images//.jpg
    [source] => <a href="http://twitter.com/">web</a>
    [text] => some message!
    [to_user_id] => 
    [to_user_id_str] => 
)

What I’ve found is that some properties are not returned with every call, location, to_user_id and screen_name (which wasn’t even returned in this call)

What i did was create a method;

function _nullify($var){
    if(isset($var)){
        return $var = empty($var) ? NULL : $var;
    } else {
        return NULL;
    }
}

This should have allowed me to check if the property exists and if it does if there is a value then return it otherwise return NULL so i can enter that into the db

However this method doesn’t seem to work.

I hope you guys can help,

Many thanks,

Andy

Answer 1

As i see it, you’re trying to check if a key exists in your object,
You could use PHP’s property_exists function for that.

function _nullify($object, $key){
    if(property_exists($object, $key))
        return empty($object->$key) ? NULL : $object->$key;
    else
        return NULL;
}

Shai.