If non-string passed to taxonomy_exists() php throws warning

[jackreichert]

To reproduce the bug pass the object returned from get_object_taxonomies() to get_terms().

Result, received the following error:

[Sat Mar 22 08:21:10 2014] [error] [client 192.168.159.1] PHP Warning:  Illegal offset type in isset or empty in /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-includes/taxonomy.php on line 226, referer: http://localhost/wp-admin/about.php

[jackreichert]

patch to fix bug

[SergeyBiryukov]

get_terms() description says that it only accepts a string or an array of strings as its first argument:
tags/3.8.1/src/wp-includes/taxonomy.php#L1252​

This looks similar to #17299, #18927, and #23767. The consensus was that we shouldn't hide warnings caused by developer errors (unless there's a strong reason). It would make debugging harder.

[jackreichert]

Thanks Sergey. And thanks for checking this ticket out so quickly.

I came across it and the result seemed incongruous to results from other functions. Sorry I missed those tickets, I promise that I searched before posting :)

[SergeyBiryukov]

No worries, those tickets are unrelated to taxonomy_exists(), but they offer similar enhancements for other functions.

If a valid parameter generates a warning, we should certainly fix that. However, in case of an invalid parameter, I think the warning is to be expected.

[jackreichert]

A bigger scope project might be to add custom error_log() messages to assist the debugging for functions that throw warnings like these.

[SergeyBiryukov]

We could probably add a _doing_it_wrong() call: tags/3.8.1/src/wp-includes/functions.php#L3018​.

[jackreichert]

That's a great tool. Learn something new every day.
So it would be something like this? (see new uploaded patch)

[jackreichert]

doing it wrong implementation

[wonderboymusic]

Warnings are the best way to alert the developer that their PHP is blowing up - I don't think this function is ambiguous with what input it wants to accept. _doing_it_wrong() could possibly be used in more places, but sparingly