I have a lot of functions that either have type hinting for arrays or use is_array()
to check the array-ness of a variable.
Now I'm starting to use objects that are iterable. They implement Iterator
or IteratorAggregate
. Will these be accepted as arrays if they pass through type hinting, or undergo is_array()
?
If I have to modify my code, is there a generic sort of is_iterable()
, or must I do something like:
if ( is_array($var) OR $var instance_of Iterable OR $var instanceof IteratorAggregate ) { ... }
What other iterable interfaces are out there?
Iterables. An object is deemed iterable if it has an implementation for the Symbol. iterator property. Some built-in types like Array , Map , Set , String , Int32Array , Uint32Array , etc. have their Symbol.
Iterable objects are a generalization of arrays. That's a concept that allows us to make any object useable in a for..of loop. Of course, Arrays are iterable.
In PHP, there are three types of arrays: Indexed arrays - Arrays with a numeric index. Associative arrays - Arrays with named keys. Multidimensional arrays - Arrays containing one or more arrays.
An object is an instance of a class. It is simply a specimen of a class and has memory allocated. Array is the data structure that stores one or more similar type of values in a single name but associative array is different from a simple PHP array. An array which contains string index is called associative array.
I think you mean instanceof Iterator
, PHP doesn't have an Iterable
interface. It does have a Traversable
interface though. Iterator
and IteratorAggregate
both extend Traversable
(and AFAIK they are the only ones to do so).
But no, objects implementing Traversable
won't pass the is_array()
check, nor there is a built-in is_iterable()
function. A check you could use is
function is_iterable($var) { return (is_array($var) || $var instanceof Traversable); }
To be clear, all php objects can be iterated with foreach, but only some of them implement Traversable
. The presented is_iterable
function will therefore not detect all things that foreach can handle.
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