PHP 7.1 | Warning: A non-numeric value encountered in

I suspect the problem is this:

echo number_format(get_post_meta($post->ID, "like", true) * 1, 0, ',', '.')

Here, we take the post meta named like and multiply it by 1, but what if that post meta doesn’t contain a number? What if it contains something else?

For example, if we did 2 x 4, we would expect PHP to give us 8, which is correct, but what if we tell PHP to multiple 2 x "hello"? or 🤔 - 📝? When that happens PHP will throw a warning, the same one that you are encountering.

So first, don’t just smush everything on to one line, use a variable to store the post meta output:

$like = get_post_meta( $post->ID, "like", true );

Then use that variable instead:

echo number_format($likes, 0, ',', '.')

Now that we’ve done that, it’s possible to check and format the variable as a number:

if ( !is_numeric( $likes ) ) {
    $likes = 0;
}

So if $likes is a false or an error value, we set it to 0 rather than just blindly using it and hoping for the best.

And finally, that line has a lot of things going on, so this might not be the issue causing the warning at all, it’s not possible to tell. In future instead of:

    <a class="like" data-image="<?php bloginfo('template_url');?>/images/loading.gif" data-field="like" data-nonce="<?php echo $nonce ?>" data-post_id="<?php echo $post->ID ?>" href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/360639/<?php echo $link ?>" title="Like"><span><?php echo number_format(get_post_meta($post->ID, "like", true) * 1, 0, ',', '.'); ?></span></a>

Do:

    <a
        class="like"
        data-image="<?php bloginfo('template_url');?>/images/loading.gif"
        data-field="like"
        data-nonce="<?php echo $nonce ?>"
        data-post_id="<?php echo $post->ID ?>"
        href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/360639/<?php echo $link ?>"
        title="Like"
    >
        <span>
            <?php echo number_format(get_post_meta($post->ID, "like", true) * 1, 0, ',', '.'); ?>
        </span>
    </a>

The above snippet does not contain any fixes, but, it’s easier to read, and easier to debug, taking all the guesswork out of which part of the line has the problem.

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