PHP 8: How to avoid fatal error when passing non-countable values to count function?

Question

So I upgraded to PHP 8 and ran my script which gave me this error:

Fatal error: Uncaught TypeError: count(): Argument #1 ($value) must be of type Countable|array, null given in C:\xampp\htdocs\app\includes\functions\create_session.php:78
Stack trace:
#0 C:\xampp\htdocs\public\front_desk.php(508): Session->check_subfeature_access(22, 0)
#1 {main} thrown in C:\xampp\htdocs\app\includes\functions\create_session.php on line 78

Which turned out to be due to a new update in PHP 8 that doesn't allow non-array values to be used in the count function and throws a fatal error stopping the further script execution. For example, if you have a $_POST['checkboxes_checked'] and you do count($_POST['checkboxes_checked']) then it will give the above error because by default it doesn't recognize it as an array. To fix this error, you can do: count((array)$_POST['checkboxes_checked'])), which fixes the problem.

However, the problem in my case is that I have a couple of hundred files that need this problem fixed, I don't want to go inside each file and fix this as that would be extremely time-consuming. Is there a way to configure PHP 8 to ignore this and still proceed with the count function with these $_POST parameters? or some sort of search/replace regex that I can run on all files that replace count($_POST['some_parameter_name']) with count((array)$_POST['some_parameter_name']))? Honestly, I have no idea how I can fix this problem without manually going into each file, and this is the part where I need your help.

Answer 1

One temporary solution would be to define your own count() function. For instance:

/**
 * @deprecated Temporary solution for count() TypeError on invalid countables
 */

function oldCount($input)
{
   return isset($input) && is_array($input) ? count($input) : 0;
}

This is just a quick example. You should ideally use your (array) prefix.

Now all you need to do is replace all the occurrences of count( in your code with oldCount(, and you're done.

WARNING: This is only meant to be a temporary solution. It requires an extra function call every time it is used and PHP 8 has not incorporated a stricter without reason: It's there to protect you. Update your code as soon as possible.