How to get instance ID with PHP

Question

I'm looking for a way to get the instance ID of a given object / resource with PHP, the same way var_dump() does:

var_dump(curl_init()); // resource #1 of type curl
var_dump(curl_init()); // resource #2 of type curl

How can I get the instance count without calling var_dump()? Is it possible?

Answer 1

This is a very interesting question... I would be interested to see what you would use this for... but here is one way...

<?php 
$ch = curl_init();
preg_match("#\d+#", (string) $ch, $matches);
$resourceIdOne = end($matches);


$ch2 = curl_init();
preg_match("#\d+#", (string) $ch2, $matches);
$resourceIdTwo = end($matches);
?>

Answer 2

(int) curl_init()

Answer 3

Convert it to an int to get the resource ID:

$resource= curl_init();
var_dump($resource);
var_dump(intval($resource));