php dynamically created class object has two properties with the same name cant figure out why

Question

Some code I used ot rely on a lot is now creating an object with two properties that have the same name.

I did not think this was even possible to have two properties with the same name and separate values.

I have a function that converts an array to a class object. This method has worked fine for so many applications and I have never encountered this stange problem before.

Below is the function with added var dumps and a die() to stop execution just to get the output of the first object to show you guys.

The params (array is putput below, class = "FA\WheelImage", namespace = "")

protected function arrayToClass($array, $class,$nameSpace=''){
        $nameSpaceClassPrefix = (!empty($nameSpace))? "\\$nameSpace\\" : "";

        if(!class_exists($nameSpaceClassPrefix . $class)){
            echo "<br>ERROR: $class is not a valid object type!<br>";
            return false;
        }
        echo "<pre>";
        var_dump($array);
        var_dump($this->headings);

        $class_name = $nameSpaceClassPrefix . $class;
        $class_object = new $class_name();
        foreach ($array as $key => $value){
            //note: this usually only works if the array is associative first so we have to set the key to be the heading
            $key = $this->headings[$key];
            //only assign if the class object has the property defined. Move out of condition if you the property created regardless of if the model defines it.
            if(!$this->explicit_properties || property_exists($class_object, $key)){
                if ($value=="false") $value = false;
                if ($value=="true") $value = true;
                if ($value=="null") $value = null;
                $class_object->{$key} = $value;
            }
        }
        var_dump($class_object);
        die("stop");
        return $class_object;
    }

OUTPUT: original array, headings used for key/property names, the resulting class object.

array(3) {
  [0]=>
  string(14) "TSW_bathurst_1"
  [1]=>
  string(3) "TSW"
  [2]=>
  string(8) "Bathurst"
}
array(3) {
  [0]=>
  string(8) "image"
  [1]=>
  string(5) "brand"
  [2]=>
  string(5) "wheel"
}
object(FA\WheelImage)#162 (4) {
  ["image"]=>
  NULL
  ["brand"]=>
  string(3) "TSW"
  ["wheel"]=>
  string(8) "Bathurst"
  ["image"]=>
  string(14) "TSW_bathurst_1"
}
stop

As you can see the class object ends up with two properties with the exact same name. How is this possible? How the class object is defined:

namespace FA;


class WheelImage
{
    var $image;
    var $brand;
    var $wheel;
}

NOTE: The headings are coming from a csv file:

//the csv file
image,brand,wheel
TSW_bathurst_1,TSW,Bathurst
TSW_bathurst_2,TSW,Bathurst
TSW_bathurst_3,TSW,Bathurst
TSW_bathurst_4,TSW,Bathurst

//how the headings are loaded
if ($has_headings) $this->headings = fgetcsv($file);//first row is headings

I don't know the reason why it works like this, but there seems to be hidden characters in your `"image"` string (see here `string(8) "image"`, it's supposed to have only 5 chars). When i re-write the string by typing it, the problem goes away — Kaddath, Oct 23 '18 at 07:28
@Kaddath thanks a lot m8 you were right. I figured something like this was going on and answered my own question before I saw your comment. So technically you comment was the correct answer :P — Brad, Oct 23 '18 at 07:33
I would have added an answer if I knew the reason why, I didn't because i can't explain why this happens. The hidden char is a `U+FEFF` actually — Kaddath, Oct 23 '18 at 07:37
I think possible a better answer would be some good implementation of php to strip all character encoding that does meet the context of its use somehow. — Brad, Oct 25 '18 at 05:51

Brad · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-25T05:55:42.613

Fixed it by just making a new csv file and manually typing the csv headings. The original file was saved via excel.

My guess is some sort of text encoding was causing the issue.

Editing the the original file by deleting the headings and typing them again wasn't working but creating a new file and typing it out fixed the issue.

Al-tho I have resolved the issue I'd still love to hear anyone's ideas on why this happened and how to make the some generic code to ignore any weird text encoding in the csv file.

I think possible this might have been a better answer if I was in the situation where recreating the source file wasnt an option. Remove non-utf8 characters from string

The mbstring extension has the solution to this type off issues. a good staarting point : http://php.net/manual/en/function.mb-convert-encoding.php — YouriKoeman, Oct 23 '18 at 08:05

php dynamically created class object has two properties with the same name cant figure out why

1 Answers1