Convert a PHP object to an associative array

Question

I'm integrating an API to my website which works with data stored in objects. My code is written using arrays and I would like a quick-and-dirty function to convert an object to an array. Any help will be appreciated!!

Answer 1

Start with simply typecasting the line:-

$array = (array) $yourObject;

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 such as the integer properties are inaccessible and protected variables have a '*' prepended to the variable name. These prepended values have null bytes on either side.

Example: Simple Object

$object = new StdClass; 
$object->foo = 1; 
$object->bar = 2; 

var_dump( (array) $object );

Output:

array(2) { 
        'foo' => int(1) 
        'bar' => int(2) 
}

Example: Complex Object

class Foo 
{ 

        private $foo; 
        protected $bar; 
        public $baz; 

        public function __construct() 
        { 

                  $this->foo = 1; 
                  $this->bar = 2; 
                  $this->baz = new StdClass; 
        } 
} 

var_dump( (array) new Foo );

Output (with \0s edited in for clarity):

array(3) { 
      '\0Foo\0foo' => int(1) 
      '\0*\0bar' => int(2) 
      'baz' => class stdClass#2 (0) {} 
}

Output with var_export instead of var_dump:

array ( 
      '' . "\0" . 'Foo' . "\0" . 'foo' => 1, 
      '' . "\0" . '*' . "\0" . 'bar' => 2, 
      'baz' => 
      stdClass::__set_state(array( 
  )), 
)

Typecasting this way will not do deep casting of the object graph and you need to apply the null bytes to access any non-public attributes. So this works best when casting StdClass objects or objects with only public properties.