Convert variable to string in PHP
Convert variable to string in PHP
PHP is a loosely typed language and assigns types to variables depending what is assigned to it. Sometimes you will want to transform a given variable into a string format and obtain a similar output with “ToString()"
method in Java or .NET.
This could be done easily with one of the following methods:
1) Type casting ( Type Juggling )
From PHP official docs: “PHP does not require (or support) explicit type definition in variable declaration; a variable’s type is determined by the context in which the variable is used. That is to say, if a string value is assigned to variable $var, $var becomes a string. If an integer value is then assigned to $var, it becomes an integer.”
Example:
1 |
$var = (string)$varname; |
2) String value
Get the string value of a variable.
Example:
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$var = strval($varname); |
2) SetType
Set the type of variable var
to type
.
Parameters:
var
The variable being converted.
type
Possibles values of type
are:
- “boolean” (or, since PHP 4.2.0, “bool”)
- “integer” (or, since PHP 4.2.0, “int”)
- “float” (only possible since PHP 4.2.0, for older versions use the deprecated variant “double”)
- “string”
- “array”
- “object”
- “null” (since PHP 4.2.0)
Example:
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$success = settype($varname, 'string'); // $varname itself becomes a string |