Trying to get property of non-object

Question

    function im_check_term($name,$tax){
        $term =  get_term_by("name", $name,$tax);
        return !is_wp_error($term) ? $term->term_id : false;
    }

Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in /home/pcodecom/demo.p30code.com/multimedia-2/wp-content/plugins/imdb/imdb.php on line 11

Answer 1

If you look at the documentation for get_term_by(), you'll see that it:

Will return false if $taxonomy does not exist or $term was not found.

You need to account for this possibility in your code by checking the value of $term. You'll also note from the documentation that get_term_by() does not return a WP_Error, so is_wp_error() is not useful. This is what you need:

$term = get_term_by( 'name', $name, $tax );

return $term ? $term->term_id : false;

The specific error you're seeing is because if $term is false then $term->term_id is invalid code.

Answer 2

get_term_by() might return the boolean value false. So the simple check for a WP_Error is not sufficient. Use the instanceof operator instead and test for a WP_Term object:

function im_check_term($name,$tax){
    $term =  get_term_by("name", $name,$tax);
    return ( $term instanceof WP_Term ) ? $term->term_id : false;
}