I have tested this item ✅ successfully on 203424c

Test is OK, I tested on local php 7.0 and and other versions at http://sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/ and https://3v4l.org/ with code:

<?php
        //Enter your code here, enjoy!
error_reporting(E_ALL);
$a = new SimpleXMLElement('<field type="text" label="Text" drink="beer"/>');

var_dump($a->attributes()->drink);
echo "\n";
echo $a->attributes()->drink;
echo "\n";
var_dump($a->attributes()->not_exists);
echo "\n";
echo $x; // Should throw PHP Notice
```<hr /><sub>This comment was created with the <a href="https://github.com/joomla/jissues">J!Tracker Application</a> at <a href="https://issues.joomla.org/tracker/joomla-cms/17861">issues.joomla.org/tracker/joomla-cms/17861</a>.</sub>

Are you sure, that ->name always exists? perhaps: isset(...)

@bembelimen it is XML object there can exist any ? even $attr->somethingRandom,
but I need to update it to check for null

ok, I have made update to make sure attribute exists

I have tested this item ✅ successfully on 70440df

I ran the existing unit tests on HHVM 3.18.5 to test for this issue, nothing came up.
Looks like we should implement a new unit test to validate the issue and the fix.

Looking at the code again, this is a good standard code simplification.
Should move forward with this PR, no additional unit tests should be needed.

@photodude can you please mark your Test as successfully (if you comment means this)?

@franz-wohlkoenig Tested just by code review.
With a structural change like this we probably should have an actual test on a site to verify that JFormField::getAttribute() is working as expected (although I have no expectation of any issues from this change).

@photodude You can test it in your own php and check if everything is OK. I will be enough.

I have tested this item ✅ successfully on 70440df

Installed patch via the patch tester and checked random forms on J3.8.3 in php 5.6
No problems, everything works as expected.

RTC

@Fedik no need for future HHVM related PR's They are only going to support Hack lang from now on
https://hhvm.com/blog/2017/09/18/the-future-of-hhvm.html