How to Check if a Property Exists in PHP

1. Use property_exists() to Check if a Property Exists in PHP
2. Use isset() to Check if a Property Exists in PHP
3. Conclusion

PHP gives us two straightforward solutions that we can use to check if a specific property exists in an object and then execute a particular piece of code.

This article will introduce these two ways to check if a property exists in an object or class in PHP.

Use property_exists() to Check if a Property Exists in PHP

The property_exists() method checks if the object or class has a property or not. It takes two arguments, the object and property.

Let’s go through an example in which we will check if a particular property exists or not. So let’s create an object with two properties, as shown below.

# php
$obj = (object) array('a' => 1, 'b' => 2);

Now, let’s check if the property c exists in this object or not, as shown below.

# php
$obj = (object) array('a' => 1, 'b' => 2);
if(property_exists($obj, 'c')){
    echo "Property C Exists";
}
if(property_exists($obj, 'b')){
    echo "Property B Exists";
}

Output:

The property b exists from the above example, and we get the above result.

Use isset() to Check if a Property Exists in PHP

The isset() function in PHP checks if a variable is set or if a variable exists or not. We can use the isset() function to check if the object has a particular property declared or not.

This function is slightly different from property_exists() because it returns true or false.

Let’s implement the isset() function with the same scenario we implemented property_exists().

# php
if(isset($obj->c)){
    echo "Property C Exists";
}
if(isset($obj->b)){
    echo "Property B Exists";
}

Output:

As you can see, it returned the same result as the property_exists() function.

Conclusion

So, in this tutorial, we learned about the two built-in functions in PHP that can be used to check if an object property exists or not and execute a certain piece of code if it does. We also learned the difference between isset() and property_exists() function.