fleshgrinder / php-value

A modern replacement for PHP’s gettype function.

Value

Modern replacement for PHP’s gettype function.

• Installation
• Usage

Installation

Open a terminal, enter your project directory and execute the following command to add this package to your dependencies:

$ composer require fleshgrinder/value

This command requires you to have Composer installed globally, as explained in the installation chapter of the Composer documentation.

Usage

The Value class currently contains a single static method called getValue and constants with the names of each of PHP’s types, corresponding to the values returned by the getValue method. There are currently no plans to extend this API and the following functionality is considered feature complete unless new types are added or old ones are removed.

<?php

use Fleshgrinder\Core\Value;

$closed_resource = tmpfile();
fclose($closed_resource);

$values = [
	[],
	true,
	1.0,
	1,
	null,
	new stdClass,
	new DateTimeImmutable,
	tmpfile(),
	$closed_resource,
	'string'
];

foreach ($values as $value) {
	echo Value::getType($value) , "\n";
}

The above will output the following:

array
boolean
float
integer
null
stdClass
DateTimeImmutable
string
resource
closed resource

This output corresponds to the available constants in the class with the exception for the concrete class names and the additionally available callable and iterable pseudo type names:

<?php

use Fleshgrinder\Core\Value;

echo Value::TYPE_ARRAY;             // array
echo Value::TYPE_BOOL;              // boolean
echo Value::TYPE_CALLABLE;          // callable
echo Value::TYPE_CLOSED_RESOURCE;   // closed resource
echo Value::TYPE_FLOAT;             // float
echo Value::TYPE_INT;               // integer
echo Value::TYPE_ITERABLE;          // iterable
echo Value::TYPE_NULL;              // null
echo Value::TYPE_OBJECT;            // object
echo Value::TYPE_RESOURCE;          // resource
echo Value::TYPE_STRING;            // string

The method comes in very handy during the creation of error messages. One of the most repeated patterns in the PHP world is the following:

$type = is_object($arg) ? get_class($arg) : gettype($arg);

Which is not only cumbersome but also produces inconsistent type names due to PHP’s inconsistent gettype function. This can be replaced with the method provided by this library.

$type = Value::getType($arg);

The method never throws anything and does not emit errors. The sole goal of this tiny library is to keep code DRY as much as possible, after all, it is one of the most important principle of them all.

I tried to get this change into PHP core but it was rejected, see PHP RFC: var_type and the linked resources at the bottom for more details.