Question

I have a technical question which need expert advise. I have a data in the database which is a string “true”. But when I retrieve it to test the condition, which one is more advisable to use even though they both work.

if ($data == true)

or

if ($data == "true")

My gut feeling is use “true” to test if the value stored is a string and use true without the quotes when the database value is stored as a boolean. But want to confirm with you guys.

Thanks…

Answer 1

Confirmed, at least almost. You’re right to check the data-type as well, however in PHP you need to use the === operator for that:

if ($data === TRUE) # boolean
if ($data === "true") # string

It’s called the identical operator ^Docs and it compares the value and the type. Often helpful.