What is stdClass in PHP?

stdClass is PHP's generic empty class, kind of like Object in Java or object in Python (Edit: but not actually used as universal base class; thanks @Ciaran for pointing this out).

It is useful for anonymous objects, dynamic properties, etc.

An easy way to consider the StdClass is as an alternative to associative array. See this example below that shows how json_decode() allows to get an StdClass instance or an associative array. Also but not shown in this example, SoapClient::__soapCall returns an StdClass instance.

<?php
//Example with StdClass
$json = '{ "foo": "bar", "number": 42 }';
$stdInstance = json_decode($json);
echo $stdInstance->foo . PHP_EOL; //"bar"
echo $stdInstance->number . PHP_EOL; //42
//Example with associative array
$array = json_decode($json, true);
echo $array['foo'] . PHP_EOL; //"bar"
echo $array['number'] . PHP_EOL; //42

See Dynamic Properties in PHP and StdClass for more examples.

So,

echo $object->distlat;
echo $object->distlng;

doesn't work for you?

The lazy one-liner method

You can do this in a one liner using the JSON methods if you're willing to lose a tiny bit of performance (though some have reported it being faster than iterating through the objects recursively - most likely because PHP is slow at calling functions). "But I already did this" you say. Not exactly - you used json_decode on the array, but you need to encode it with json_encode first.

Requirements

The json_encode and json_decode methods. These are automatically bundled in PHP 5.2.0 and up. If you use any older version there's also a PECL library (that said, in that case you should really update your PHP installation. Support for 5.1 stopped in 2006.)

Converting an array/stdClass -> stdClass

$stdClass = json_decode(json_encode($booking));

Converting an array/stdClass -> array

The manual specifies the second argument of json_decode as:

assoc
When TRUE, returned objects will be converted into associative arrays.

Hence the following line will convert your entire object into an array:

$array = json_decode(json_encode($booking), true);