Question

I have a URL that would be like so:

http://mysite.com/index.php?somename=somevalue

I usually check that somename exists by doing:

if (isset($_GET['somename'])) {

However, I have seen a lot of people do this lately:

if ($_GET['somename'] != NULL) {

My question is, is either way better than the other?

Answer 1

Unlike the null check,

isset($_GET['somename']

will not throw an “undefined index” notice, so it’s definitely the more preferable of the two.

array_key_exists("somename", $_GET); 

would also be valid.

You may want to combine this with a null check however if you want to disallow empty values.