Fixing "Warning: Illegal string offset" -- (but without losing content) - php

Question

I have searched for solution for this problem but none fix my problem.
The answers suggest that I use isset to check the array before working on it. But I will explain how it doesnt do it for me later.
Pre-req:
I've got a huge XML file from a tour & travel webservice which I would parse and convert to PHP array and later do some operation on it. (Filter tours mostly).
My Approach:
I'm using SimpleXML to load the xml and convert it to PHP array like so:
$xml = file_get_contents(APPPATH."tour.xml", true);
$xmlString = htmlentity_to_xml($xml); //custom method to clean XML
$Str = simplexml_load_string($xmlString, 'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA);
//converting to array
$json = json_encode($Str);
$array = json_decode($json,TRUE);
Then I'm sending this array to a fitlerTours($searchParams, $tourArray) method along with search parameters (cityName & dates) and the array itself.
Then using foreach() i'm going through each tour to look for the cityName and raising a flag if found.
The Problem
When I filter the tours (the ones which contain cityName) for dates, I'm getting this.
Severity: Warning
Message: Illegal string offset 'year'
Filename: controllers/tourFilter.php
Line Number: 78
Warning shows for offeset 'month' and 'day' also.
Here's my PHP for date filter: (Line 78 is 4th line)
if($flag == 1){
if(!empty($fromDate)){
foreach($tour['departureDates']['date'] AS $date){
$dateDep = strtotime($date['year'] . "-" . (($date['month']) < 10 ? "0".$date['month'] : $date['month']) . "-" . (($date['day']) < 10 ? "0".$date['day'] : $date['day']));
if(strtotime($fromDate) <= $dateDep && $dateDep <= strtotime($fromDate . "+".$range." days")){
if($date['departureStatus'] != "SoldOut"){
$dateFlag = 1;
}
}
}
}
else{
$dateFlag = 1;
}
$flag = 0;
}
if($dateFlag == 1){//Collect tours which contain the keyword & dates to $response array
$responseArray[] = $tour;
$dateFlag = false; //Reset Flag
}
Here's the snippet of XML:
...
<departureDates>
<date>
<day>7</day>
<month>1</month>
<year>2016</year>
<singlesPrice>12761</singlesPrice>
<doublesPrice>9990</doublesPrice>
<triplesPrice>0</triplesPrice>
<quadsPrice>0</quadsPrice>
<shipName/>
<departureStatus>Available</departureStatus>
</date>
<date>
<day>8</day>
<month>1</month>
<year>2016</year>
<singlesPrice>12761</singlesPrice>
<doublesPrice>9990</doublesPrice>
<triplesPrice>0</triplesPrice>
<quadsPrice>0</quadsPrice>
<shipName/>
<departureStatus>SoldOut</departureStatus>
</date>
</departureDates>
...
Now if i use the solution I found by searching around is check if the array is set properly by isset() it doesn't return true and line 78 is not executed and the data is lost. But I need the data.
This happens for only keywords i search.
Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

The error says that the $date var is detected as string in some point...
Characters within strings may be accessed and modified by specifying
the zero-based offset of the desired character after the string using
square array brackets, as in $str[42]. Think of a string as an array
of characters for this purpose.
See here
So try this:
if(is_array($date)){
$dateDep = strtotime($date['year'] . "-" . (($date['month']) < 10 ? "0".$date['month'] : $date['month']) . "-" . (($date['day']) < 10 ? "0".$date['day'] : $date['day']));
if(strtotime($fromDate) <= $dateDep && $dateDep <= strtotime($fromDate . "+".$range." days")){
if($date['departureStatus'] != "SoldOut"){
$dateFlag = 1;
}
}
}
else {
//If this is not an array what is it then?
var_dump($date);
}