WP_Term breaks type-hints for stdClass

[exz]

Since 4.4.0 instances of WP_Term is returned from various function calls in WordPress core. Before the return value(s) were instances of stdClass. #14162

This makes code that type-hints stdClass not work with 4.4.0+, if you for instance have a callback for array_map() that expects a stdClass you will get:

Argument 1 passed to {closure}() must be an instance of stdClass, instance of WP_Term given

This would be easily fixed by just making WP_Term extend stdClass like this:

final class WP_Term extends stdClass { }

I haven't tested if this breaks something else, but would you consider this change, or is it up to the plugin/theme developer to change all code that expects a stdClass to be able to support 4.4.0+?

[johnbillion]

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that a stdClass pseudo-object will at some point get upgraded to a proper class, as happened with WP_Termin 4.4 and with WP_User, WP_Post, etc in previous releases.

This makes type hinting stdClass fragile. I think this issue is a wontfix.

[nerrad]

I agree with @johnbillion here. In general I don't think client code should be typehinting stdClass because that's really brittle. stdClass is like a placeholder for better things. So I also favor a wontfix for this ticket.

[boonebgorges]

Thanks for the ticket, @exz . The consensus here and in Slack seems to be that type-hinting for stdClass is not something we want to support. Documentation has always noted that an object (not a stdClass) would be returned here.