Question

Not very strong in PHP so here is my question:

I am building a simple array to return as json, populating it with data from another array.
The $eventarray may have the index gas or may not so I need to check for existing gas index and if it exist get the value if not populate with a default value.

How would I do that the most optimal way?

Again not that strong in PHP.

Here is the array:

 $somearr = array(
       "actiontaken"=>sprintf("%s", $eventarray['desc']),
        "actionname" =>sprintf("%s", $eventarray['name']),
        "type" =>sprintf("%s", $eventarray['type']),
        "subtype" =>sprintf("%s", $eventarray['name']),
        "min" =>sprintf("%s", $eventarray['min']),
        "gas" =>sprintf("%s", $eventarray['gas']),
        "playerId"=>$value['p'],
        "name" =>$value2['name'],
        "race" =>$value2['race']
);

Answer 1

You can use isset() to check if the element exists (and is not null):

isset($eventarray['gas']) ? $eventarray['gas'] : 'defaultvalue'

Note: In case null is a possible value where you do not want the default value to be used you cannot use isset but have to use array_key_exists($eventarray, 'gas') instead.