Question

Based on the examples from this page, I wanted to convert the below if statement to a ternary operator.

Working code using if statement:

if (!empty($address['street2'])) echo $address['street2'].'<br />';

I am not sure how this should be written using a ternary operator so that the echo works only if street2 exists in the array and is not an empty string.

Answer 1

The

(condition) ? /* value to return if condition is true */ 
            : /* value to return if condition is false */ ;

syntax is not a “shorthand if” operator (the ? is called the conditional operator) because you cannot execute code in the same manner as if you did:

if (condition) {
    /* condition is true, do something like echo */
}
else {
    /* condition is false, do something else */
}

In your example, you are executing the echo statement when the $address is not empty. You can’t do this the same way with the conditional operator. What you can do however, is echo the result of the conditional operator:

echo empty($address['street2']) ? "Street2 is empty!" : $address['street2'];

and this will display “Street is empty!” if it is empty, otherwise it will display the street2 address.