How do I use the ternary operator in PHP as a shorthand for if else

Question

Based on the examples from this page  I have the working and non-working code samples below   Working code using if statement   if   empty  address  street2     echo  address  street2     lt br   gt      Non-working code using ternary operator     test    empty  address  street2        Yes  lt br   gt      No  lt br   gt        Also tested this  empty  address  street2        Yes  lt br   gt      No  lt br   gt      UPDATE After Brian s tip  I found that echoing  test outputs the expected result   The following works like a charm   echo  empty  storeData  street2        Yes  lt br   gt      No  lt br   gt

User · Answer

The ternary operator is just a shorthand for and if/else block. Your working code does not have an else condition, so is not suitable for this.

The following example will work:

echo empty($address['street2']) ? 'empty' : 'not empty';

User · Answer

There s also a shorthand ternary operator and it looks like this    expression1     expression2 will return expression1 if it evaluates to true or expression2 otherwise   Example    a    Apples   echo   a     Oranges       are great      will return  Apples are great       Since PHP 5 3  it is possible to leave out the middle part of the   ternary operator  Expression expr1    expr3 returns expr1 if expr1   evaluates to TRUE  and expr3 otherwise    From the PHP Manual

User · Answer

You can do this even shorter by replacing echo with  lt    code   gt    lt    empty  storeData  street2        Yes  lt br   gt      No  lt br   gt    gt   This is useful especially when you want to determine  inside a navbar  whether the menu option should be displayed as already visited  clicked  or not    lt li lt     basename   index php      class  active          gt  gt  lt a href  index php  gt Home lt  a gt  lt  li gt

User · Answer

It s the Ternary operator a k a Elvis operator  google it  P  you are looking for    echo  address  street2       Empty      It returns the value of the variable or default if the variable is empty

User · Answer

If first variable  a  is null  then assign value of second variable  b  to first variable  a    a   5    b   10        a        a   a    b    echo  a

User · Answer

Note that when using nested conditional operators  you may want to use parenthesis to avoid possible issues   It looks like PHP doesn t work the same way as at least Javascript or C     score   15   age   5      The following will return  Exceptional  echo  Your score is        score  gt  10     age  gt  10    Average     Exceptional       age  gt  10    Horrible     Average         The following will return  Horrible  echo  Your score is        score  gt  10    age  gt  10    Average     Exceptional     age  gt  10    Horrible     Average      The same code in Javascript and C  return  Exceptional  in both cases   In the 2nd case  what PHP does is  or at least that s what I understand     is  score  gt  10  yes is  age  gt  10  no  so the current  age  gt  10    Average     Exceptional  returns  Exceptional  then  instead of just stopping the whole statement and returning  Exceptional   it continues evaluating the next statement the next statement becomes  Exceptional     Horrible     Average  which returns  Horrible   as  Exceptional  is truthy   From the documentation  http   php net manual en language operators comparison php     It is recommended that you avoid  stacking  ternary expressions  PHP s   behaviour when using more than one ternary operator within a single   statement is non-obvious

User · Answer

The   condition       value to return if condition is true                      value to return if condition is false        syntax is not a  shorthand if  operator  the   is called the conditional operator  because you cannot execute code in the same manner as if you did   if  condition           condition is true  do something like echo      else          condition is false  do something else        In your example  you are executing the echo statement when the  address is not empty  You can t do this the same way with the conditional operator  What you can do however  is echo the result of the conditional operator   echo empty  address  street2       Street2 is empty      address  street2      and this will display  Street is empty   if it is empty  otherwise it will display the street2 address

User · Answer

PHP 7   As of PHP 7  this task can be performed simply by using the Null coalescing operator like this    echo  empty  address  street2        Empty

User · Answer

Quick and short way   echo  address  street2        No     Here are some interesting examples  with one or more varied conditions    color    blue       Condition  1 Show color without specifying variable  echo  color      Undefined   echo   lt br gt        Condition  2 echo  color    color    Undefined   echo   lt br gt        Condition  3 echo   color     color    Undefined   echo   lt br gt        Condition  4 echo   color     blue      color    Undefined   echo   lt br gt        Condition  5 echo   color          color     color     blue     color    Undefined     echo   lt br gt        Condition  6 echo   color     blue     color     color          color     color          color    Undefined      echo   lt br gt        Condition  7 echo   color            color           color     blue     color    Undefined      Undefined      Undefined   echo   lt br gt

User · Answer

I dont think i found the answer in all the above solutions  Some are also wrong   To tests if a variable  or an element of an array  or a property of an object  exists  and is not null  use  echo isset  address  street2       address  street2      Empty   To tests if a variable       contains some non-empty data use   echo  empty  address  street2       address  street2      Empty

User · Answer

Basic True   False Declaration   is admin     user  permissions       admin    true   false     Conditional Welcome Message  echo  Welcome     user  is logged in      user  first name      Guest          Conditional Items Message  echo  Your cart contains    num items   item    num items    1    s               ref  https   davidwalsh name php-ternary-examples

User · Answer

Conditional Welcome Message  echo  Welcome     user  is logged in      user  first name      Guest          Nested PHP Shorthand  echo  Your score is       score  gt  10     age  gt  10    Average     Exceptional       age  gt  10    Horrible     Average

User · Answer

I think you probably should not use ternary operator in php  Consider next example    lt  php  function f1  n        var dump  first funct        return  n    1     function f2  n        var dump  second funct        return  n    2       foo   1   a    f1  foo      uno     f2  foo      dos     tres   print  a     How do you think  what  a variable will contain   hint  dos  And it will remain the same even if  foo variable will be assigned to 2   To make things better you should either refuse to using this operator or surround right part with braces in the following way    a    f1  foo      uno      f2  foo      dos     tres

User · Answer

Ternary Operator is basically shorthand for if else statement  We can use to reduce few lines of code and increases readability    Your code looks cleaner to me  But we can add more cleaner way as follows-   test    empty  address  street2        Yes  lt br   gt      No  lt br   gt     Another way-   test     empty  address  street2        Yes  lt br   gt      No  lt br   gt      Note- I have added bracket to whole expression to make it cleaner  I used to do this usually to increase readability  With PHP7 we can use Null Coalescing Operator   php 7    operator for better approach  But your requirement it does not fit

User · Answer

I think you used the brackets the wrong way  Try this    test    empty  address  street2       Yes  lt br   gt      No  lt br   gt       I think it should work  you can also use   echo  empty  address  street2       Yes  lt br   gt      No  lt br   gt

[php] How do I use the ternary operator ( ? : ) in PHP as a shorthand for "if / else"?

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