Fluent Interface method call in an if statement

[proggR]

I'm working on an application and it seems that the else block is being executed no matter what in the following if statement. My question (which seems really basic and like I should know the answer but I can't seem to remember) is if you have an object instance in an if statement, how does that resolve? Will it resolve to true because there is an object there? I assume/think that would be the behaviour but I can't remember.

Also, I'll point out the class I'm working with is Zend_Mail. From my understanding the send method will return an instance of $this upon success and will throw an exception on failure. The mail is being sent but the else block is executing anyway. I may just throw it in a try catch if that's better.

	if ($mail->send()) {
		return true;
	} else {
		$NOTICE++;
		$NOTICESTR[] = "We were unable to e-mail an e-mail notification <strong>".$to["email"]."</strong>.<br /><br />A system administrator was notified of this issue, but you may wish to contact this learner manually and let them know their accommodation has been removed.";

		application_log("error", "Unable to send accommodation notification to [".$to["email"]."] / type [".$type."]. Zend_Mail said: ".$mail->ErrorInfo);
	}

 

 

Thanks in advance. I'll check back in a bit.