“Cannot use string offset as an array” Fatal Error

Question

I have seen answers to a similar issue but they didn't help resolve the problem. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Problem line:

$postvals['attachment'][$i] = array( 'post_title' => $renamed,'post_content' => '','post_excerpt' => '','post_mime_type' => $file['type'],'guid' => $file['url'], 'file' => $file['file'] );

Complete code:

function cp_process_new_image() {
global $wpdb;
$postvals = '';

for ( $i=0; $i < count( $_FILES['image']['tmp_name'] ); $i++ ) {
    if ( !empty($_FILES['image']['tmp_name'][$i]) ) {
        // rename the image to a random number to prevent junk image names from coming in
        $renamed = mt_rand( 1000,1000000 ).".".mastheme_find_ext( $_FILES['image']['name'][$i] );

        //Because WP can't handle multiple uploads as of 2.8.5
        $upload = array( 'name' => $renamed,'type' => $_FILES['image']['type'][$i],'tmp_name' => $_FILES['image']['tmp_name'][$i],'error' => $_FILES['image']['error'][$i],'size' => $_FILES['image']['size'][$i] );

        // need to set this in order to send to WP media
        $overrides = array( 'test_form' => false );

        // check and make sure the image has a valid extension and then upload it
        $file = cp_image_upload( $upload );

        if ( $file ) // put all these keys into an array and session so we can associate the image to the post after generating the post id
            $postvals['attachment'][$i] = array( 'post_title' => $renamed,'post_content' => '','post_excerpt' => '','post_mime_type' => $file['type'],'guid' => $file['url'], 'file' => $file['file'] );
    }
}
return $postvals;

}

Answer 1

“Cannot use string offset as an array” Fatal Error

As shown in your code, $postvals is a string and not an array, so the key for attachment does not exist.

Changing:

$postvals = '';

To one of the following:

$postvals = array();
$postvals = [];

Will initialize the varaible as the correct type.