PHP Fatal PHP Fatal error: __clone method called on non-object

Question

So, I am working on a project and I am having an issue as I keep getting both errors and warnings. I am quite new to PHP so be gentle. The program runs fine using PHP 5.5 However when I run the program in PHP 5.6 I receive several errors as follows;

[10-Oct-2016 10:04:46 America/Denver] PHP Warning: Erroneous data format for unserializing 'MMR\Bundle\CodeTyperBundle\Entity\User' in /hermes/bosnaweb14a/b1234/.../application/vendor/doctrine/orm/lib/Doctrine/ORM/Mapping/ClassMetadataInfo.php on line 833 [10-Oct-2016 10:04:46 America/Denver] PHP Notice: unserialize(): Error at offset 49 of 50 bytes in /hermes/bosnaweb14a/b1234/.../application/vendor/doctrine/orm/lib/Doctrine/ORM/Mapping/ClassMetadataInfo.php on line 833 [10-Oct-2016 10:04:46 America/Denver] PHP Fatal error: __clone method called on non-object in /hermes/bosnaweb14a/b1234/.../application/vendor/doctrine/orm/lib/Doctrine/ORM/Mapping/ClassMetadataInfo.php on line 837

Project Info

Platform: Symfony PHP Version: 5.6

Affected Code

public function newInstance()
{
    if ($this->_prototype === null) {
        if (PHP_VERSION_ID === 50429 || PHP_VERSION_ID === 50513) {
            $this->_prototype = $this->reflClass->newInstanceWithoutConstructor();
        } else {
           $this->_prototype = unserialize(sprintf('O:%d:"%s":0:{}', strlen($this->name), $this->name)); //Line 833
        }
    }

  return clone $this->_prototype; //Line 837
}

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Answer 1

I tested:

var_dump(clone $t=unserialize(sprintf('O:%d:"%s":0:{}', strlen('name'), 'name')));

And it works.

You have to check the value of $this->name maybe its empty or has illegal chars.

Where is $this->name set in the first place?