error of foreach with empty array - php

Question

I'm working in Laravel 5 using Blade as motor of templates. I'm passing an array from the controller to the view, and I noticed that when I loop on it using the foreach clausule and the array is empty it gives error, exactly this:
Invalid argument supplied for foreach()
I had the same error in the controller and I fix it temporaly making:
if(count($student)!=0)
I said temporaly because I don't think it this the best way to do it.
The code in the controller is:
foreach($students as $student){
if(count($student->contracts)!=0)
foreach($student->contracts as $contract){
//something
}//end foreach
}//end foreach
I made some operations over the arrays, and then I send them to the view:
return view('myview')->with(['students'=>$students]);
The array is passing to the view correctly. I said is the foreach, beacause earlier I had the database full of registers and it worked fine, but now I have some students that doesn't have contracts and then I got that error. But, in the view I have the same error. So, it's normal? how could I fix it in a better way? why when the array is empty the foreach clausule gives that error?

Answer 1

PHP will not return that warning if the array contained at $student->contracts is empty. It will return it if it is of an invalid type (i.e. not an array).
Rather than checking the count() of $student->contracts, you'd be better to check if it's actually an array, as follows:
foreach($students as $student)
{
// Make sure that $student->contracts is actually an array (to bypass errors):
if( is_array($student->contracts) )
{
// Now loop through it:
foreach( $student->contracts as $contract)
{
// Do something here
}
}
}

Answer 2

Try this
$people = [
"Person A", "Person B", "Person C"
];
return view ('pages', compact('people'));
and loop through it like this:
#if (count($people))
<h3>People:</h3>
<ul>
#foreach($people as $person)
<li>{{ $person }}</li>
#endforeach
</ul>
#endif