If statement......

Hi,

What is the best way to write an if statement to check whether a variable is empty? The variable in question is a field of a table retrieved from a database.

Any ideas?

 

if ($variable = "")
{
...
};

PHP:

If I am wrong, correct me.

 

Why not use empty()?

if (empty($var)){
  // ....
}

PHP:

 

theres a better way, php has a built in function for doing this

If (empty($some_var)){
	//code here will execute if $some_var is empty
}

PHP:

if you wanted to see if it wasn’t empty (i.e. it has a value) then do

If (!empty($some_var)){
	//code here will execute if $some_var has something in it
}

PHP:

mor einfo here: http://uk3.php.net/manual/en/function.empty.php

 

It depends on what you mean with "empty", but this might be what you want: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.empty.php

 

Thanks for your tips lanmonkey.

 

Basically I know certain values in the database are set to NULL. How would I check if a variable was not NULL? Is this the same as empty?

 

this is also give us a right answer : http://www.php.net/empty

 

It should be:

if ($variable == "")

PHP:

 

null is NOT the same as empty. you would use the inbuilt php function is_null, so in your case you would use:

if (!is_null($var)){
//code here will execute if $var is NOT null
}

http://uk3.php.net/manual/en/function.is-null.php