Unable to check if ActiveRecord own properties isset or empty using array access notation

[beroso]

What steps will reproduce the problem?

Created a ActiveRecord model class, for example:

class FinancialTransaction extends \yii\db\ActiveRecord
{
    /**
     * Custom property to be set manually
     */
    public $annotation;

    /**
     * @inheritdoc
     */
    public static function tableName()
    {
        return '{{%account}}';
    }

    // ... 
}

And run code like this:

$model = new FinancialTransaction();
$model->annotation = 'Some annotation';

var_dump($model['annotation']);
var_dump(isset($model['annotation']));
var_dump(empty($model['annotation']));

What is the expected result?

string(15) "Some annotation"
bool(true)
bool(false)

What do you get instead?

string(15) "Some annotation"
bool(false)
bool(true)

Suggestion:

Change implementation of BaseActiveRecor::offsetExists from:

public function offsetExists($offset)
{
    return $this->__isset($offset);
}

to:

public function offsetExists($offset)
{
    return isset($this->$offset);
}

So it will cover own ActiveRecord properties and fallback to __isset when needed.

Additional info

Q	A
Yii version	2.0.28, 2.0.30
PHP version	7.3, 7.4
Operating system	Mac OSX 10.15.1

[jwlewisiii]

BaseActiveRecord extends yii\base\Model which implements the suggestion above. We can remove offsetExists method from the BaseActiveRecord class and rely on the Model classes implementation.

yii\base\Model::offsetExists

public function offsetExists($offset)
    {
        return isset($this->$offset);
    }

[samdark]

Potentially that may break things. @yiisoft/core-developers, @yiisoft/reviewers what do you think? Any breaks that may happen?

[xepozz]

If you need to check properties, please check from $model->attributes ($model->attributes['name'].
You can't check any indexes from object. By default it will throw an exception.

---

The fact that ActiveRecord "hides" this exception is very frustrating.
It would be nice to remove this strange behavior.

[tQuant]

Since recent versions yii starts to check isset on attribute when loading relations in \yii\db\ActiveRelationTrait::filterByModels

    private function filterByModels($models)
    {
            ...
            foreach ($models as $model) {
                $value = isset($model[$attribute]) ? $model[$attribute] : null;

Until recent versions, relations of this kind worked

class FinancialTransaction extends \yii\db\ActiveRecord
{
    /**
     * Custom property to be set manually
     */
    public $annotationId;

    /**
     * @inheritdoc
     */
    public static function getAnnotation()
    {
        return $this->hasOne(className, ['id' => 'annotationId']);
    }
}

Now they don't .

---

\yii\db\BaseActiveRecord::offsetUnset() method checks for the existence of the property:

    public function offsetUnset($offset)
    {
        if (property_exists($this, $offset)) {
            $this->$offset = null;
        } else {
            unset($this->$offset);
        }
    }

Maybe just add the same check to \yii\db\BaseActiveRecord::offsetExists() method?

    public function offsetExists($offset)
    {
        return property_exists($this, $offset) || $this->__isset($offset);
    }

[wheldongori]

@samdark Was this issue sorted or how do we debunk this problem?

[samdark]

The original one descibed in the initla post? No. In order to solve it, a pull request would be great to see if it breaks any existing tests.