Concrete5.8 Express Object could not be converted to String

Question

Following the guide here

http://documentation.concrete5.org/developers/express/using-the-express-entry-block-to-output-entry-data

I am able to create the same results but if I change the example and attempt to use the attribute of an express object which is a file link or a date field the view block returns the following error

"Object of class DoctrineProxies__CG__\Concrete\Core\Entity\File\File could not be converted to string"

Can the below code be modified to resolve this or is this a core issue?

<?php defined('C5_EXECUTE') or die(_("Access Denied.")); ?>
<?php

if (isset($entry) && is_object($entry)) { 


$drawings = $entry->getDrawings();

?>




<table id="datatable", class="table">
    <thead>
    <tr>
        <th>Drawing Name</th>
        <th>Drawing Number</th>
        <th>Revision</th>
        <th>Revision Date</th>
        <th>Category</th>
        <th>PDF</th>            
    </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
    <?php if (count($drawings)) {
        foreach($drawings as $drawing) { ?>
            <tr>
                <td><?=$drawing->getDrawingName()?></td>
                <td><?=$drawing->getDrawingNumber()?></td>
                <td><?=$drawing->getRevision()?></td>
                <td><?=$drawing->getDrawingRevisionDate()?></td>
                <td><?=$drawing->getDrawingCategory()?></td>
                <td><?=$drawing->getDrawingPdf()?></td>                                 

            </tr>
        <?php } ?>
    <?php } else { ?>
        <tr>
            <td colspan="6">No drawings found.</td>
        </tr>
    <?php } ?>
    </tbody>
</table>
<?php } ?>

Answer 1

the problem comes from this line:

<?=$drawing->getDrawingPdf()?>

what getDrawingPdf() is returning is a file object so it cannot be output to the screen like a simple string. First, you would have to extract a string from it. For instance, the following code would extract the file name and show it.

<?php
$drawingPdf = $drawing->getDrawingPdf();
$pdfFileName = is_object($drawingPdf)? $drawingPdf->getFileName() : '';
?>
<td><?=$pdfFileName?></td> 

What this code does is first get the file object which you already had in your code. Then if we have a proper file object, get the file name. If it's not a proper file object (you never now it might have been deleted) we return and empty string. And finally, we output our string $pdfFileName (which is either the filename or an empty string) in your table.

Hope this helps