PHP: a short cut for isset and !empty?

Question

I wonder if there any better ideas to solve the problem below,

I have a form with a number of input fields, such as,

Answer 1

isset && !empty is redundant. The empty language construct is basically shorthand for !isset($foo) || !$foo, with !empty being equivalent to isset($foo) && $foo. So you can shorten your code by leaving out the isset check.

A much simpler way is:

$values = array('pg_title' => null, 'pg_subtitle' => null, …);
$values = array_merge($values, $_POST);

// use $values['pg_title'] etc.

If you don't want your default null values to be overwritten by falsey values, e.g. '', you can do something like this:

$values = array_merge($values, array_filter($_POST));

Just be aware that '0' is falsey as well.