isset() and empty() - what to use

Could you help me to improve my coding style?:) In some tasks I need to check - is variable empty or contains something. To solve this task, I usually do the following.

Check - is this variable set or not? If it's set - I check - it's empty or not?

<?php
    $var = '23';
    if (isset($var)&&!empty($var)){
        echo 'not empty';
    }else{
        echo 'is not set or empty';
    }
?>

And I have a question - should I use isset() before empty() - is it necessary? TIA!

Solution 1:

It depends what you are looking for, if you are just looking to see if it is empty just use empty as it checks whether it is set as well, if you want to know whether something is set or not use isset.

Empty checks if the variable is set and if it is it checks it for null, "", 0, etc

Isset just checks if is it set, it could be anything not null

With empty, the following things are considered empty:

• "" (an empty string)
• 0 (0 as an integer)
• 0.0 (0 as a float)
• "0" (0 as a string)
• NULL
• FALSE
• array() (an empty array)
• var $var; (a variable declared, but without a value in a class)

From http://php.net/manual/en/function.empty.php

As mentioned in the comments the lack of warning is also important with empty()

PHP Manual says

empty() is the opposite of (boolean) var, except that no warning is generated when the variable is not set.

Regarding isset

PHP Manual says

isset() will return FALSE if testing a variable that has been set to NULL

Your code would be fine as:

<?php
    $var = '23';
    if (!empty($var)){
        echo 'not empty';
    }else{
        echo 'is not set or empty';
    }
?>

For example:

$var = "";

if(empty($var)) // true because "" is considered empty
 {...}
if(isset($var)) //true because var is set 
 {...}

if(empty($otherVar)) //true because $otherVar is null
 {...}
if(isset($otherVar)) //false because $otherVar is not set 
 {...}

Solution 2:

In your particular case: if ($var).

You need to use isset if you don't know whether the variable exists or not. Since you declared it on the very first line though, you know it exists, hence you don't need to, nay, should not use isset.

The same goes for empty, only that empty also combines a check for the truthiness of the value. empty is equivalent to !isset($var) || !$var and !empty is equivalent to isset($var) && $var, or isset($var) && $var == true.

If you only want to test a variable that should exist for truthiness, if ($var) is perfectly adequate and to the point.

Solution 3:

You can just use empty() - as seen in the documentation, it will return false if the variable has no value.

An example on that same page:

<?php
$var = 0;

// Evaluates to true because $var is empty
if (empty($var)) {
    echo '$var is either 0, empty, or not set at all';
}

// Evaluates as true because $var is set
if (isset($var)) {
    echo '$var is set even though it is empty';
}
?>

You can use isset if you just want to know if it is not NULL. Otherwise it seems empty() is just fine to use alone.