Variable is an array but not countable?

Question

I am upgrading our Codeigniter (v. 3.1.11) site from php 5.6 to php 7.2 (currently running on localhost on my Mac). Slowly I am finding all the instances of count() usage and correcting them. It is my understanding that an array is countable, but I seem to not be able to count arrays returned by Codeigniter's result_array() function after a database call....

the following section of my controller

    $reviews = $this->reviews_model->review_details($productname);
    echo "Variable is type: ".gettype($reviews);
    if (count($reviews >=1)) {
        $myreview=$reviews[0];
    } else {
        $myreview=0;
    }
    return $myreview;

calls this function in my model (note that I am echoing out the variable type just to be sure!)

    function review_details($pagename) {
    $r = false;
    $sql = "select Reviews.*, ReviewItemLink.Item as Product, ReviewItemLink.* from Reviews LEFT JOIN ReviewItemLink ON Reviews.ReviewItemID=ReviewItemLink.ReviewItemID where pagename=? AND ReviewActive = 1 ORDER BY Date DESC";
    $query = $this->db->query($sql, $pagename);
    if ($query->num_rows() > 0):
        $r = $query->result_array();
    endif;
    return $r;
}

And even though the variable is an array

Variable is type: array

I still get the by now, oh-so-familiar warning message:

Severity: Warning
Message: count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable
Filename: controllers/Software.php
Line Number: 1005

Backtrace:

File: /Users/juner/Sites/html/application/controllers/Software.php
Line: 1005
Function: _error_handler
File: /Users/juner/Sites/html/application/controllers/Software.php
Line: 75
Function: _get_my_review

File: /Users/juner/Sites/html/index.php
Line: 324
Function: require_once

Are there types of arrays that are NOT countable? Any suggestions/ideas would be most helpful!

Ibu · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-02 18:27:04Z

4

This part is incorrect (typo?):

if (count($reviews >=1)) {
    $myreview=$reviews[0];
} else {
    $myreview=0;
}

You are passing a boolean to the count function. count($reviews >=1) turns to count(true); which is why you got your warning.

if (count($reviews >=1)) { should be if (count($reviews) >=1 ) {

answered Oct 2, 2019 at 18:27

Ibu

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2 Comments

Jreif Over a year ago

Oh - good heavens! what a silly mistake. Yes - that correction allows it to be counted. But It does make me wonder how this worked for years on 5.6!

Ibu Over a year ago

In PHP 5.6, count(true) gives you 1 due to type coercion. So in your case it returned 1 and allowed the loop to continue.

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