Question

I’m looking for most efficient way to output empty string instead of "null" for null values. Is there a way to do this without conditional statements (i.e. if or ternary (? :) operator).

Code sample as follows:

$.each(data, function(index, item) {
  return $("div#SearchResults").append(item.PhoneNumber);
}

when item.PhoneNumber is null, the page renders with a string “null” inside the SearchResults div, instead I wanted to be empty.

Answer 1

$.each(data, function(index, item) {
  return $("div#SearchResults").append(item.PhoneNumber || "");
}

With $.trim (unexpectedly converts null and undefined to empty string):

$.each(data, function(index, item) {
  return $("div#SearchResults").append($.trim(item.PhoneNumber));
}

Unexpected because it’s both unintuitive and undocumented.