PHP Catchable fatal error: Object of class could not be converted to string

Question

I am completely lost here... After validating some input I create an instance of a `Message` class and attempt to insert data into the database: ``` // send message $message = $this->model->build('message', true); $message->insertMessage($uid, $user->user_id, $title, $message); ``` The method for insertion is very straight-forward: ``` // insert a new message public function insertMessage($to_id, $from_id, $title, $body) { $sql = "INSERT INTO messages (to_id, from_id, title, body, create_date) VALUES (:to_id, :from_id, :title, :body, NOW())"; $sth = $this->db->prepare($sql); return $sth->execute([':to_id' => $to_id, ':from_id' => $from_id, ':title' => $title, ':body' => $body]); } ``` However, upon submission I end up with a blank page and the Apache error log says: [Tue Jul 30 22:34:44 2013] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Catchable fatal error: Object of class framework\models\Message could not be converted to string in /var/www/p-lug/p-lug_lib/framework/models/Message.php on line 18…

Accepted Answer

So $message contains an object.

This object gets passed to the function insertMessage as the 4th argument ($body which is still the same object)

You then store the Message object stored in the variable $body in the hash array which is passed as an argument to execute.

The execute function attempts to convert the Message object to a string but finds that there is not __toString function declared.

So either declare

```
public function __toString() {
    return $the_string;
}
```

or create another public function/member that you can pass to the execute function.

PHP Catchable fatal error: Object of class could not be converted to string

Solution

Problem