Illegal string offset error in wordpress theme options textarea

Question

I have added a textarea in my theme options page to have Google analytics code. It was working fine until today when I was developing it, it's showing this error inside the textarea box:

<br />
<b>Warning</b>:  Illegal string offset 'googanalytics' in <b>C:\xampp\htdocs\tamal\wp-content\themes\blogkori\theme-options.php</b> on line <b>85</b><br />

This is my original code:

<?php

add_action( 'admin_init', 'theme_options_init' );
add_action( 'admin_menu', 'theme_options_add_page' );

/**
 * Init plugin options to white list our options
 */
function theme_options_init(){
    register_setting( 'blogkori_options', 'blogkori_theme_options', 'theme_options_validate' );
}

/**
 * Load up the menu page
 */
function theme_options_add_page() {
    add_theme_page( __( 'BlogKori Options', 'blogkori' ), __( 'BlogKori Options', 'blogkori' ), 'edit_theme_options', 'theme_options', 'theme_options_do_page' );
}

/**
 * Create the options page
 */
function theme_options_do_page() {
    global $select_options, $radio_options;

    if ( ! isset( $_REQUEST['settings-updated'] ) )
        $_REQUEST['settings-updated'] = false;

    ?>
    <div class="wrap">
        <?php echo "<h2>". __( 'BlogKori Options', 'blogkori' ) . "</h2>"; ?>
        <?php if ( false !== $_REQUEST['settings-updated'] ) : ?>
        <div class="updated fade"><p><strong><?php _e( 'Options saved', 'blogkori' ); ?></strong></p></div>
        <?php endif; ?>

        <form method="post" action="options.php">



            <?php settings_fields( 'blogkori_options' ); ?>
            <?php $options = get_option( 'blogkori_theme_options' ); ?>

...

<div class="row">
            <div style="" class="left">
                <h3>Google Analytics</h3>
                <p>This is where you should add Google Analytics or other tracking scripts</p>
                        <textarea id="blogkori_theme_options[googanalytics]" class="large-text" cols="50" rows="5" name="blogkori_theme_options[googanalytics]" onclick="this.focus();this.select()"><?php echo esc_textarea( $options['googanalytics'] ); ?></textarea>

                <p class="submit">
                <input type="submit" class="button-primary" value="<?php _e( 'Save Changes', 'blogkori' ); ?>" />
            </p>


            </div>

Thanks for looking.

Answer 1

If get_option( 'blogkori_theme_options' ) doesn't have a value you're not going to get an array back, which means that $options['googanalytics'] isn't valid. You'll need to account for this possibility.

You could do that by checking if googleanalytics is set, and setting it to a new variable, or an empty string if it's not set:

$options = get_option( 'blogkori_theme_options' );
$googleanalytics = isset( $options['googleanalytics'] ) ? $options['googleanalytics'] : '';

Then you would just echo $googleanalytics in the textarea:

<textarea id="blogkori_theme_options[googanalytics]" class="large-text" cols="50" rows="5" name="blogkori_theme_options[googanalytics]" onclick="this.focus();this.select()"><?php echo esc_textarea( $googanalytics ); ?></textarea>