PHP: Fastest way to handle undefined array key

Update

Since PHP 7 you can accomplish this with the null coalesce operator:

return $table[$key] ?? null;

Old answer

First of all, arrays are not implemented as a B-tree, it's a hash table; an array of buckets (indexed via a hash function), each with a linked list of actual values (in case of hash collisions). This means that lookup times depend on how well the hash function has "spread" the values across the buckets, i.e. the number of hash collisions is an important factor.

Technically, this statement is the most correct:

return array_key_exists($key, $table) ? $table[$key] : null;

This introduces a function call and is therefore much slower than the optimized isset(). How much? ~2e3 times slower.

Next up is using a reference to avoid the second lookup:

$tmp = &$lookup_table[$key];

return isset($tmp) ? $tmp : null;

Unfortunately, this modifies the original $lookup_table array if the item does not exist, because references are always made valid by PHP.

That leaves the following method, which is much like your own:

return isset($lookup_table[$key]) ? $lookup_table[$key] : null;

Besides not having the side effect of references, it's also faster in runtime, even when performing the lookup twice.

You could look into dividing your arrays into smaller pieces as one way to mitigate long lookup times.

I did some bench marking with the following code:

set_time_limit(100);

$count = 2500000;
$search_index_end = $count * 1.5;
$search_index_start = $count * .5;

$array = array();
for ($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++)
    $array[md5($i)] = $i;

$start = microtime(true);
for ($i = $search_index_start; $i < $search_index_end; $i++) {
    $key = md5($i);
    $test = isset($array[$key]) ? $array[$key] : null;
}
$end = microtime(true);
echo ($end - $start) . " seconds<br/>";

$start = microtime(true);
for ($i = $search_index_start; $i < $search_index_end; $i++) {
    $key = md5($i);
    $test = array_key_exists($key, $array) ? $array[$key] : null;
}
$end = microtime(true);
echo ($end - $start) . " seconds<br/>";


$start = microtime(true);
for ($i = $search_index_start; $i < $search_index_end; $i++) {
    $key = md5($i);
    $test = @$array[$key];
}
$end = microtime(true);
echo ($end - $start) . " seconds<br/>";

$error_reporting = error_reporting();
error_reporting(0);
$start = microtime(true);
for ($i = $search_index_start; $i < $search_index_end; $i++) {
    $key = md5($i);
    $test = $array[$key];
}
$end = microtime(true);
echo ($end - $start) . " seconds<br/>";
error_reporting($error_reporting);

$start = microtime(true);
for ($i = $search_index_start; $i < $search_index_end; $i++) {
    $key = md5($i);
    $tmp = &$array[$key];
    $test = isset($tmp) ? $tmp : null;
}
$end = microtime(true);
echo ($end - $start) . " seconds<br/>";

and I found that the fastest running test was the one that uses isset($array[$key]) ? $array[$key] : null followed closely by the solution that just disables error reporting.

This Work for me

{{ isset($array['key']) ? $array['key']: 'Default' }} 

but this is fast

{{ $array['key'] or 'Default' }}

There are two typical approaches to this.

1. Define defaults for an undefined key.
2. Check for undefined key.

Here is how to perform the first and as little code as possible.

$data = array_merge(array($key=>false),$data);
return $data[$key];

Here is how to perform the second.

return isset($data[$key]) ? $data[$key] : false;

Just a sudden idea that would have to be tested, but did you try using array_intersect_key() to get the existing values and a array_merge to fill() the rest ? It would remove the need of a loop to access the data. Something like that :

$searched_keys = array ('key1' => null, 'key2' => null); // the list of the keys to find

$exiting_values = array_intersect_key($lookup_table, $searched_keys);
$all_values = array_merge($searched_keys, $exiting_keys);

Please note that I did not tried it performance-wise.