Question

I have the following code

while($row = $usafisRSP->fetch_assoc())
{

 $hidden_keys  = array('Applicantid', 'unique_num', 'regs_time' ....);
 $hidden_fields = array_intersect_key($row, array_fill_keys($hidden_keys, NULL));

$hidden_values = array();

foreach ($hidden_fields as $key => $value) {
  // fill the values array using the values from fields array
  $hidden_values[$value] =  "$key = ".base64_decode($value)."
";


if(base64_decode($value)== 0)
{
  $hidden_values[$value] = "";
}

 echo $hidden_values[$value];

The question is about “if($hidden_values[$value] == 0)” … Basically I want to do not display/echo the $hidden_values[$value] if it’s value of $value is 0. Sometimes $value is 0 or some words like (23 avenue).

Answer 1

I think you ran into three catches with PHP type comparisons and equalities:

1. Any string not beginning with a number will always loosely equal 0. So basically, if(base64_decode($value)== 0) will likely always resolve to true, even if decoded $value is "Adam".
2. Return value of base64_decode is a string, so if 0 is the result, it will be string 0, not integer 0. This means if(base64_decode($value) === 0) wouldn’t even work if decoded $value is "0". Another catch is base64_decode may return false on errors, again failing this strict equality check.
3. A non-empty string (other than "0") will always loosely equal true. So this is the only comparison you really need for your case.

I think this is what you want, replacing the last 5 lines…

if(base64_decode($value)) echo $hidden_values[$value];
else $hidden_values[$value] = "";

} // closing your for loop