PHP equivalent of .NET/Java's toString()

How do I convert the value of a PHP variable to string?

I was looking for something better than concatenating with an empty string:

$myText = $myVar . '';

Like the ToString() method in Java or .NET.

You can use the casting operators:

$myText = (string)$myVar;

There are more details for string casting and conversion in the Strings section of the PHP manual, including special handling for booleans and nulls.

Note that it would return meaningful results only for some scalar types.

• for boolean values and null consider using json_encode()
• for arrays also consider using json_encode()
• for objects, casting to string will result in error, unless __toString() method has been defined in the class. In this case, casting to string will return whatever this function returns