Question

I’m grabbing a row from the the db in a wordpress plugin using:

$ongoing_event = $wpdb->get_row('select * from wp_em_ongoing where event_id='.$EM_Event->id);   

This returns the first row as an object.

Later down I’m I have checkboxes that I want to check if a value exists in the db:

e.g.

<input type="checkbox" value="1" name="week_1" 
    <?php if ($ongoing_event->week_1==1) echo 'checked="checked"' ?> />

However if the row doesn’t exist, I get an error since it can’t find a property for an empty object.

I have done the following, but not sure if there’s a better way:

<input type="checkbox" value="1" name="week_1" 
    <?php if ($ongoing_event && $ongoing_event->week_1==1) echo 'checked="checked"' ?> />

I will be having many input fields that I need to check this way.

Edit: The last line I showed already works. However, I have many of these checkboxes throught the page. I was hoping for a way to not have to check if the object is empty for every single occurrence.

What I am getting at, is there a way for me to use the following block of code without getting an error:

<input type="checkbox" value="1" name="week_1" 
    <?php if ($ongoing_event->week_1) echo 'checked="checked"' ?> />

Answer 1

If you’re concerned about clutter then you can use short open tags. like so:

<?= ($ongoing_event && $ongoing_event->week_1 == 1) ? 'checked="checked"' : ''; ?>

Additionally, you can use isset() or is_object() to check if something exists or if the variable is an object, respectively.

Another way to avoid clutter would be to set a variable at the top like:

$set = isset($ongoing_event) && is_object($ongoing_event);

Then later you can modify your if statement to something like this:

<?= ($set && $ongoing_event->week_1 == 1) ? 'checked="checked"' : ''; ?>

Otherwise, if your checkboxes are all numbered sequentially, then use a loop:

<?php for ($ctr = 0; $ctr <= $amountOfWeeks; $ctr++): ?>
    <?php $week = 'week_' . $ctr; ?>
    <input type="checkbox" value="1" name="<?= $week; ?>" 
        <?= ($set && $ongoing_event->$week == 1) ? 'checked="checked"' : ''; ?>
<?php endfor; ?>