Question

I have an array of html textbox element with name say date_field[]. There could be multiple fields in the form. After submission of the form to check whether at least one of the textbox is not empty, I used –

<?php
if(empty($_POST["date_field"])){
        echo "Is empty";
    }else{
        echo "is not empty";
    }
?>

It echoed is not empty no matter whether I fill or I didn’t fill this date_field.

P.S. If I printed the form value using print_r

If I didn’t put value

[followup_date] => Array
        (
            [0] => 
        )

if I put value

[followup_date] => Array
        (
            [0] => 2012-12--14
        )

Any help will be highly appreciated

Answer 1

Your “empty” array contains an empty string:

array(0 => '')

That’s not an empty array. The only “empty” array is array().

You may want to run it through array_filter, which removes all elements evaluating to false (which also includes "0", be careful).