Question

Best example would be to show you how is this solved in Javascript:

var someString = someEmptyString || 'new text value';

In this javascript example, we have detected that ‘someEmptyString’ is empty and automatically set the value to ‘new text value’. Is this possible in PHP and what’s the shortest (code) way to do it?

This is how I do it now:

if ($someEmptyString == "")
    $someString = 'new text value'; else $someString = $someEmptyString;

This is bugging me for quite some time and I would be very grateful if someone knows a better way to do this. Thank you!

Answer 1

You can use the ternary operator ?:.

If you have PHP 5.3, this is very elegant:

$someString = $someEmptyString ?: 'new text value';

Before 5.3, it needs to be a bit more verbose:

$someString = $someEmptyString ? $someEmptyString : 'new text value';