Check if Object can be converted to String in PHP

This tutorial will discuss how to check if object can be converted to string in PHP.

To check if an object can be converted into a string in PHP, we need to verify if the class contains a __toString() method.

For instance, let’s consider a sample class. We create an object of this class.

class SomeSampleClass
{
    public function __toString()
    {
        return 'SomeSampleClass';
    }
}

// Create an object from Class
$object = new SomeSampleClass();

To check if the object can be converted into a string, we need to determine if the __toString() method exists in the object’s class. To accomplish this, we can use the method_exists() function in PHP. We pass the object as the first argument and the string __toString as the second argument. If method_exists() returns true, it means the object contains a method with the name __toString().

We have created a separate function for this,

function isStringConvertible($object)
{
    return method_exists($object, '__toString');
}

It accepts an object as an argument and returns true if the object can be converted into a string. The function utilizes the method_exists() function to check the presence of the __toString() method in the object’s class.

Let’s see the complete example,

<?php
/**
 * Check if an object can be converted to a string.
 *
 * @param mixed $object The object to validate.
 * @return bool True if the object can be converted to a string, false otherwise.
 */
function isStringConvertible($object)
{
    return method_exists($object, '__toString');
}

// A Class
class SomeSampleClass
{
    public function __toString()
    {
        return 'SomeSampleClass';
    }
}

// Create an object from Class
$object = new SomeSampleClass();

// Check if object can be converted into a string
if (isStringConvertible($object)) {
    echo "The object can be converted to a string.";
} else {
    echo "The object cannot be converted to a string.";
}
?>

Output

The object can be converted to a string.

Summary

Today, we learned how to check if object can be converted to string in PHP.