Question

In PHP, What is the best way to check whether a string variable is empty or null?

I currently have the following:

if($variable == null || $variable == "")
    exit;

And wondered if there was a more minimalistic way of doing this?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Use empty() see http://php.net/manual/en/function.empty.php

if(empty($myvariable)) 
   exit();

Empty returns true if the variable is empty or null, full details below

From the doc

Determine whether a variable is considered to be empty. A variable is considered empty if it does not exist or if its value equals FALSE. empty() does not generate a warning if the variable does not exist.

Returns FALSE if var exists and has a non-empty, non-zero value. Otherwise returns TRUE.

The following things are considered to be empty (return true):

• "" (an empty string)
• 0 (0 as an integer)
• 0.0 (0 as a float)
• "0" (0 as a string)
• NULL
• FALSE
• array() (an empty array)
• $var; (a variable declared, but without a value)