Convert a PHP object to an associative array

Question

I\'m integrating an API to my website which works with data stored in objects while my code is written using arrays.

I\'d like a quick-and-dirty function to convert

Answer 1

Just typecast it

$array = (array) $yourObject;

From Arrays:

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; 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.

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 (as explained in the manual quote) to access any non-public attributes. So this works best when casting StdClass objects or objects with only public properties. For quick and dirty (what you asked for) it's fine.

Also see this in-depth blog post:

• Fast PHP Object to Array conversion

Answer 2

Here is some code:

function object_to_array($data) {
    if ((! is_array($data)) and (! is_object($data)))
        return 'xxx'; // $data;

    $result = array();

    $data = (array) $data;
    foreach ($data as $key => $value) {
        if (is_object($value))
            $value = (array) $value;
        if (is_array($value))
            $result[$key] = object_to_array($value);
        else
            $result[$key] = $value;
    }
    return $result;
}

Answer 3

All other answers posted here are only working with public attributes. Here is one solution that works with JavaBeans-like objects using reflection and getters:

function entity2array($entity, $recursionDepth = 2) {
    $result = array();
    $class = new ReflectionClass(get_class($entity));
    foreach ($class->getMethods(ReflectionMethod::IS_PUBLIC) as $method) {
        $methodName = $method->name;
        if (strpos($methodName, "get") === 0 && strlen($methodName) > 3) {
            $propertyName = lcfirst(substr($methodName, 3));
            $value = $method->invoke($entity);

            if (is_object($value)) {
                if ($recursionDepth > 0) {
                    $result[$propertyName] = $this->entity2array($value, $recursionDepth - 1);
                }
                else {
                    $result[$propertyName] = "***";  // Stop recursion
                }
            }
            else {
                $result[$propertyName] = $value;
            }
        }
    }
    return $result;
}

Answer 4

Also you can use The Symfony Serializer Component

use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Encoder\JsonEncoder;
use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Normalizer\ObjectNormalizer;
use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Serializer;

$serializer = new Serializer([new ObjectNormalizer()], [new JsonEncoder()]);
$array = json_decode($serializer->serialize($object, 'json'), true);

Answer 5

To convert an object into array just cast it explicitly:

$name_of_array = (array) $name_of_object;

Answer 6

$Menu = new Admin_Model_DbTable_Menu(); 
$row = $Menu->fetchRow($Menu->select()->where('id = ?', $id));
$Addmenu = new Admin_Form_Addmenu(); 
$Addmenu->populate($row->toArray());