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

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.

This is done with typecasting:

$strvar = (string) $var; // Casts to stringecho $var; // Will cast to string implicitlyvar_dump($var); // Will show the true type of the variable

In a class you can define what is output by using the magical method __toString. An example is below:

class Bottles {    public function __toString()    {        return 'Ninety nine green bottles';    }}$ex = new Bottles;var_dump($ex, (string) $ex);// Returns: instance of Bottles and "Ninety nine green bottles"

Some more type casting examples:

$i = 1;// int 1var_dump((int) $i);// bool truevar_dump((bool) $i);// string "1"var_dump((string) 1);

Use print_r:

$myText = print_r($myVar,true);

You can also use it like:

$myText = print_r($myVar,true)."foo bar";

This will set $myText to a string, like:

array (  0 => '11',)foo bar

Use var_export to get a little bit more info (with types of variable,...):

$myText = var_export($myVar,true);