forcing access to __PHP_Incomplete_Class object properties

I found this hack which will let you cast an object:

function casttoclass($class, $object)
{
  return unserialize(preg_replace('/^O:\d+:"[^"]++"/', 'O:' . strlen($class) . ':"' . $class . '"', serialize($object)));
}

From http://blog.adaniels.nl/articles/a-dark-corner-of-php-class-casting/

So you can do:

$obj = casttoclass('stdClass', $incompleteObject);

and then access properties as normal.

You could also define an unserialize_callback_func in a .htaccess/Apache configuration file. That way you wouldn't need to hack any PHP but you could include the file on demand.

None of the above answers actually worked for me, except this solution:

$object = unserialize(serialize($object));
$object->function();

Hope it helps someone

As an addition here is my version of the fix_object() function: The main change is step 3 in the code: Make all properties public.

When PHP serializes an object, all private and protected properties are prefixed with two null-bytes! These null-bytes are the actual reason, why the property cannot be accessed via $obj->key because actually it is something like $obj->{NULL*NULL}key.

/**
 * Takes an __PHP_Incomplete_Class and casts it to a stdClass object.
 * All properties will be made public in this step.
 *
 * @since  1.1.0
 * @param  object $object __PHP_Incomplete_Class
 * @return object
 */
function fix_object( $object ) {
    // preg_replace_callback handler. Needed to calculate new key-length.
    $fix_key = create_function(
        '$matches',
        'return ":" . strlen( $matches[1] ) . ":\"" . $matches[1] . "\"";'
    );

    // 1. Serialize the object to a string.
    $dump = serialize( $object );

    // 2. Change class-type to 'stdClass'.
    $dump = preg_replace( '/^O:\d+:"[^"]++"/', 'O:8:"stdClass"', $dump );

    // 3. Make private and protected properties public.
    $dump = preg_replace_callback( '/:\d+:"\0.*?\0([^"]+)"/', $fix_key, $dump );

    // 4. Unserialize the modified object again.
    return unserialize( $dump );
}

var_dump will not display these NULL byte prefixes to you, but you can see them with this code:

class Test {
    private $AAA = 1;
    protected $BBB = 2;
    public $CCC = 3;
}

$test = new Test();
echo json_encode( serialize( $test ) );

// Output:
// "O:4:\"Test\":3:{s:9:\"\u0000Test\u0000AAA\";i:1;s:6:\"\u0000*\u0000BBB\";i:2;s:3:\"CCC\";i:3;}"

$test2 = fix_object( $test );
echo json_encode( serialize( $test2 ) );

// Output:
// "O:8:\"stdClass\":3:{s:3:\"AAA\";i:1;s:3:\"BBB\";i:2;s:3:\"CCC\";i:3;}"

There you see:

• The private property is prefixed with NULL + classname + NULL
• The protected property is prefixed with NULL + "*" + NULL

I tried the answer of Tom Haigh here, but discovered 2 problems.

1. when you have other "Incomplete_Class" objects as properties of the top-level-class they stay untouched as __PHP_Incomplete_Class Object
2. if you have private properties, they will still be private in your stdClass object

So I rewrote the function handle this:

/**
 * @see: https://stackoverflow.com/a/965704/2377961
 *
 * @param  object  $object  The object that should be casted
 * @param  String  $class   The name of the class
 * @return mixed   The new created object
 */
function casttoclass($object, $class = 'stdClass')
{
  $ser_data = serialize($object);
  # preg_match_all('/O:\d+:"([^"]++)"/', $ser_data, $matches); // find all classes

  /*
   * make private and protected properties public
   *   privates  is stored as "s:14:\0class_name\0property_name")
   *   protected is stored as "s:14:\0*\0property_name")
   */
  $ser_data = preg_replace_callback('/s:\d+:"\0([^\0]+)\0([^"]+)"/',
    function($prop_match) {
      list($old, $classname, $propname) = $prop_match;
      return 's:'.strlen($propname) . ':"' . $propname . '"';
  }, $ser_data);

  // replace object-names
  $ser_data = preg_replace('/O:\d+:"[^"]++"/', 'O:' . strlen($class) . ':"' . $class . '"', $ser_data);
  return unserialize($ser_data);
}

I switch the function arguments too, so that you can use

$obj = casttoclass($incompleteObject);

And you get an stdClass object with only public properties. Even if you have objects in childclasses they are converted to stdClass with public properties too.

If you just need to access raw data (like class variables) from a PHP_Incomplete_Class object, you can use the foreach hack, or you can also do:

$result_array = (array)$_SESSION['incomplete_object_index'];
echo $result_array['desired_item'];

Put the session_start() after your require to the class of the object you are trying to read from the SESSION

I've read a lot of suggestions on how to fix incomplete classobjects and I actually needed to fix those problems myself, in a ecommerce-project.

One suggestion I've found is to simply use json_decode/json_encode to convert incomplete classes without preloading anything. However, I didn't want to take the risk using this, if there are older PHP versions that are dependent in for example PECL, that is described at http://php.net/manual/en/function.json-encode.php - so I finally succeeded to make my own solution.

However, the code is a way to get the data out of the object properly, so it may not fit all needs - and it will primarily, use the json-solution first, if it is available in the environment and fail over to manual handling if needed.

It also works recursively, which in my own case is required, to save the whole array.

/**
 * Convert a object to a data object (used for repairing __PHP_Incomplete_Class objects)
 * @param array $d
 * @return array|mixed|object
 */
function arrayObjectToStdClass($d = array())
{
    /**
     * If json_decode and json_encode exists as function, do it the simple way.
     * http://php.net/manual/en/function.json-encode.php
     */
    if (function_exists('json_decode') && function_exists('json_encode')) {
        return json_decode(json_encode($d));
    }
    $newArray = array();
    if (is_array($d) || is_object($d)) {
        foreach ($d as $itemKey => $itemValue) {
            if (is_array($itemValue)) {
                $newArray[$itemKey] = (array)$this->arrayObjectToStdClass($itemValue);
            } elseif (is_object($itemValue)) {
                $newArray[$itemKey] = (object)(array)$this->arrayObjectToStdClass($itemValue);
            } else {
                $newArray[$itemKey] = $itemValue;
            }
        }
    }
    return $newArray;
}