What does the (array) syntax do? - php

Question

I'm currently building code in Laravel and adding the (array) part to my code fixed my laravel sync problem when there was no data being passed in the array. This is the question I learned from and got the (array) code to use.
I'm having a hard time finding the documentation for this in laravel or php and was wondering which language/framework the (array) code originates from and what it exactly does. If you could direct me to the right documentation page I would love that as well.

Answer 1

It's just another way of creating an array by using an existing variable
$x = 1; // int
$y = (array)$x; // array[0] => 1
$z = [$x]; // array[0] => 1
I should note that the last way would be preferred (directly declaring it as an array), since it's clearer what will happen (type juggling can produce unexpected results when converting values like this).
http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.array.php#language.types.array.casting

Answer 2

I think you are struggling with the process of type casting in php, like:
PHP type casting to array
We can convert any data type variable in array using (array) keyword. Any scalar data type conversion into array will create array and add element at 0th index.
For example:
<?php
var_dump((array) , 5);// value 5 in the array with 0th index
var_dump((array) NULL);// Will be empty array
?>
Explanation with example

Answer 3

It's just an array castring, according to the php manual
Converting to array
For any of the types integer, float, string, boolean and resource,
converting a value to an array results in an array with a single
element with index zero and the value of the scalar which was
converted. In other words, (array)$scalarValue is exactly the same as
array($scalarValue).
If an object is converted to an array, the result is an array whose
elements are the object's properties. The keys are the member variable
names, with a few notable exceptions: integer properties are
unaccessible; private variables have the class name prepended to the
variable name; protected variables have a '*' prepended to the
variable name. These prepended values have null bytes on either side.
This can result in some unexpected behaviour:
<?php
>
> class A {
> private $A; // This will become '\0A\0A' }
>
> class B extends A {
> private $A; // This will become '\0B\0A'
> public $AA; // This will become 'AA' }
>
> var_dump((array) new B()); ?>
The above will appear to have two keys named 'AA', although one of
them is actually named '\0A\0A'.
Converting NULL to an array results in an empty array.