__toString() doesn't return my string

[Jessica]

I am trying to use the PHP5 magic function __toString() (Doc: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.magic.php) in some of my classes, and it isn't returning what I specify, it returns the object ID number.

 

Here's what I have:

Class Attribute{
var $attributeID;
var $attribute;

function __toString(){
	return $this->attribute;
}
}

 

Now, when I try to use it here, when $atts is an array of Attributes()

if(count($atts)){
foreach($atts AS $v){
	print $v.'<br />';
}
}

I get stuff that looks like this:

Object id #4

Object id #7

 

But if I do

print $v->attribute.'<br />';

 

It shows up properly as

Color

Size

 

So, what's the dilly-yo? I made sure it's running PHP5, but even if it were PHP4 it should still work when I do the print, yeah?

[paul2463]

Hi Jesi

 

this doesnt answer you question and I know you will have looked there anyway as you have shouted at me to look at these things before but someone else has come across the same problem <a href="http://us2.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.magic.php#70643"> Here </a>

[Jessica]

Well I feel silly Thanks Paul.

Now I have to figure out how to do it...

[Jessica]

What I ended up doing is changing the point of my function so instead of returning a string which I could print later, it just prints the values itself.

What I had was:

if(count($atts)){
$str = '';
foreach($atts AS $v){
	$str .= $v. '<br />';
}
return $str;
}

 

Change to:

if(count($atts)){
foreach($atts AS $v){
	print $v;
	print '<br />';
}
}

 

I tried typecasting with (string), using {} syntax, everything I could think of. If anyone ever figures out a way to do this...post!

[Jessica]

Gah, sorry to bump again, just wanted to add this:

What I NOW have done is just use the $a->attribute since it was just one value. The __toString() would be valuable here if I were returning more, such as all of the variables concatenated. However, in this case it's a bit of overkill for what I was trying to do.

[genericnumber1]

From what I recall I read, there was a lot of disagreement of when toString() would convert or not, I figure this is one of those quirks the function has.

 

a simple workaround would be instead of doing

 

print $v . '<br />';

 

you could do

 

print $v , '<br />';

 

since echo and print can actually print comma separated values as well.