Question

Sorry if the title isn’t clear enough, but in Javascript you can do this :

var input = null;
var fruit = input || 'default';

Just wondering if PHP supports that kind of checking, currently I’m using :

$fruit = !empty($input)?$input : ‘default’ ;

Which is quite good, but of course the Javascript method is more elegant.

Thanks

Answer 1

|| returns a boolean in PHP, so this operator cannot be used for it. Same for or.

However, you can use the binary ?: operator if you are using PHP5.3+:

$fruit = $input ?: 'default';

However, it has one great disadvantage destroying its usefulness in the single case where it would be most useful (when importing request variables):

$fruit = $_REQUEST['fruit'] ?: 'strawberry';

This would throw an E_NOTICE in your face if $_REQUEST['fruit'] didn’t exist. So in this case you still need the ternary version of it with an isset or !empty check.