Accessor magic method not working in PHP 8

Question

I recently upgraded Ubuntu from 20.04 LTS to 22.04 LTS. I noticed that PHP was upgraded to the following version:

PHP 8.1.2-1ubuntu2.13 (cli) (built: Jun 28 2023 14:01:49) (NTS)
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v4.1.2, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v8.1.2-1ubuntu2.13, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

My PHP application stopped working in this part:

public function __set($name, $value)
{
  $this->$name = $value;
}

public function DisplayMenu($buttons)
{
  echo "\t\t\t<nav>\n\t\t\t\t<ul>\n";
  while (list($name, $url) = each($buttons)) {
    $this->DisplayButton($name, $url);
  }
  echo "\t\t\t\t</ul>\n\t\t\t</nav>\n";
}

The accessor magic method stopped working after the upgrade from PHP 7.x to 8.x. What is the new way to use the equivalent in PHP 8.x? Thank you.

"stopped working" is not an adequate description of the problem for us to be able to help. What's the error? What _should_ it be doing? What is it doing instead? — Sammitch, Aug 17 '23 at 18:00
@ceejayoz The HTML is printed out and when my `while` loop posted in the question starts, it stops working. It looks like the `each()` function was removed in PHP 8. — Jaime Montoya, Aug 17 '23 at 18:04
@Sammitch The HTML is printed out and when my `while` loop posted in the question starts, it stops working. It looks like the `each()` function was removed in PHP 8. — Jaime Montoya, Aug 17 '23 at 18:05
@JaimeMontoya "Stops working" should be accompanied by an error message in this situation. If you're not seeing one, you should check your error reporting and logs; life'll be tough without error messages. — ceejayoz, Aug 17 '23 at 18:09
@ceejayoz You are right. I will try that next time for debugging properly. Thank you. — Jaime Montoya, Aug 17 '23 at 18:10

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 17 '23 at 18:00

It's not the accessor. The problem is that the each function was removed in PHP 8. You'll need to switch to a foreach loop.

<?php
class what 
{
    public function __set($name, $value)
    {
        $this->$name = $value;
    }

    public function DisplayButton($name,$value)
    {
        $this->$name = $value;
    }

    public function DisplayMenu($buttons)
    {
      echo "\t\t\t<nav>\n\t\t\t\t<ul>\n";
      foreach( $buttons as $name => $url ) {
        $this->DisplayButton($name, $url);
      }
      echo "\t\t\t\t</ul>\n\t\t\t</nav>\n";
    }
}

$x = new what();
$x->DisplayMenu(['a'=>'b','c'=>'d']);
print_r($x);
?>

Accessor magic method not working in PHP 8

1 Answers1