Question

Possible Duplicate:
How to check if $_GET is empty?

I’m trying to check for the condition that there is any $_GET data in my urls ?var=foo&biz=bang, and the if statement I’m currently using to do this is isset($_GET) //Do something, but it’s return truey even though there isn’t even any ? or & anywhere in my URL. I’m assuming that the $_GET variable is always set, so how do I check for this?

Duplicate of “How to check if $_GET is empty?”

Answer 1

Since $_GET is always set in php (when run in a webserver), what you really want to know is “is anything in there?”

You want to use:

if ($_GET) {
}

This works because $_GET is an array, and an empty array will be evaluated false, while a populated array is true.

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UPDATE

I no longer use the above method, since it has really negative effects on testability and CLI-run commands (phpunit, artisan).

I now always check isset() on the $_GET array. I also usually assign to an array inside the if – php evaluates these expressions to the value of the assigned variable.

If your framework has a “safe array access” function, you should always use it. If you framework has a “safe GET function” that’s even better.
If you aren’t using a framework, or your framework does not include these helper functions, you should write them for yourself.

// example with "safe array access"
if (isset($_GET) && $value = safe_array($_GET, 'key')) {
    // do something with $value
}

// example with "safe GET function"
if ($value = safe_input_get('key')) {
    // do something with $value
}