Check if value isset and null

IIRC, you can use get_defined_vars() for this:

$foo = NULL;
$vars = get_defined_vars();
if (array_key_exists('bar', $vars)) {}; // Should evaluate to FALSE
if (array_key_exists('foo', $vars)) {}; // Should evaluate to TRUE

If you are dealing with object properties which might have a value of NULL you can use: property_exists() instead of isset()

<?php

class myClass {
    public $mine;
    private $xpto;
    static protected $test;

    function test() {
        var_dump(property_exists($this, 'xpto')); //true
    }
}

var_dump(property_exists('myClass', 'mine'));   //true
var_dump(property_exists(new myClass, 'mine')); //true
var_dump(property_exists('myClass', 'xpto'));   //true, as of PHP 5.3.0
var_dump(property_exists('myClass', 'bar'));    //false
var_dump(property_exists('myClass', 'test'));   //true, as of PHP 5.3.0
myClass::test();

?>

As opposed with isset(), property_exists() returns TRUE even if the property has the value NULL.

See Best way to test for a variable's existence in PHP; isset() is clearly broken

 if( array_key_exists('foo', $GLOBALS) && is_null($foo)) // true & true => true
 if( array_key_exists('bar', $GLOBALS) && is_null($bar)) // false &  => false

I have found that compact is a function that ignores unset variables but does act on ones set to null, so when you have a large local symbol table I would imagine you can get a more efficient solution over checking array_key_exists('foo', get_defined_vars()) by using array_key_exists('foo', compact('foo')):

$foo = null;
echo isset($foo) ? 'true' : 'false'; // false
echo array_key_exists('foo', compact('foo')) ? 'true' : 'false'; // true
echo isset($bar) ? 'true' : 'false'; // false
echo array_key_exists('bar', compact('bar')) ? 'true' : 'false'; // false

Update

As of PHP 7.3 compact() will give a notice for unset values, so unfortunately this alternative is no longer valid.

compact() now issues an E_NOTICE level error if a given string refers to an unset variable. Formerly, such strings have been silently skipped.

I found this topic when I was looking for a solution for an array. to check for the presence of an array element that contains NULL, this construction helped me

    $arr= [];
    $foo = 'foo';
    $arr[$foo]= NULL;
    if (array_key_exists('bar', $arr)) {}; // Should evaluate to FALSE
    if (array_key_exists('foo', $arr)) {}; // Should evaluate to TRUE
    if (array_key_exists($foo, $arr)) {}; // Should evaluate to TRUE

Check if value isset and null

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