php stdClass to array

Question

The lazy one-liner method

You can do this in a one liner using the JSON methods if you're willing to lose a tiny bit of performance (though some have reported it being faster than iterating through the objects recursively - most likely because PHP is slow at calling functions). "But I already did this" you say. Not exactly - you used json_decode on the array, but you need to encode it with json_encode first.

Requirements

The json_encode and json_decode methods. These are automatically bundled in PHP 5.2.0 and up. If you use any older version there's also a PECL library (that said, in that case you should really update your PHP installation. Support for 5.1 stopped in 2006.)

---

Converting an array/stdClass -> stdClass

$stdClass = json_decode(json_encode($booking));

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Converting an array/stdClass -> array

The manual specifies the second argument of json_decode as:

assoc
When TRUE, returned objects will be converted into associative arrays.

Hence the following line will convert your entire object into an array:

$array = json_decode(json_encode($booking), true);

use this function to get a standard array back of the type you are after...

return get_object_vars($booking);

Use the built in type cast functionality, simply type

$realArray = (array)$stdClass;

Since it's an array before you cast it, casting it makes no sense.

You may want a recursive cast, which would look something like this:

function arrayCastRecursive($array)
{
    if (is_array($array)) {
        foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
            if (is_array($value)) {
                $array[$key] = arrayCastRecursive($value);
            }
            if ($value instanceof stdClass) {
                $array[$key] = arrayCastRecursive((array)$value);
            }
        }
    }
    if ($array instanceof stdClass) {
        return arrayCastRecursive((array)$array);
    }
    return $array;
}

Usage:

$obj = new stdClass;
$obj->aaa = 'asdf';
$obj->bbb = 'adsf43';
$arr = array('asdf', array($obj, 3));

var_dump($arr);
$arr = arrayCastRecursive($arr);
var_dump($arr);

Result before:

array
    0 => string 'asdf' (length = 4)
  1 => 
    array
        0 =>
        object(stdClass)[1]
          public 'aaa' => string 'asdf' (length = 4)
          public 'bbb' => string 'adsf43' (length = 6)
      1 => int 3

Result after:

array
    0 => string 'asdf' (length = 4)
  1 => 
    array
        0 =>
        array
          'aaa' => string 'asdf' (length = 4)
          'bbb' => string 'adsf43' (length = 6)
      1 => int 3

Note:

Tested and working with complex arrays where a stdClass object can contain other stdClass objects.

Please use following php function to convert php stdClass to array

get_object_vars($data)