Any way to specify optional parameter values in PHP?

Question

Let\'s say I\'ve got a PHP function foo:

function foo($firstName = \'john\', $lastName = \'doe\') {
    echo $firstName . \" \" . $lastName;
}
// foo(); --&g         


        

Answer 1

If you have multiple optional parameters, one solution is to pass a single parameter that is a hash-array:

function foo(array $params = array()) {
    $firstName = array_key_exists("firstName", $params) ?
      $params["firstName"] : "";
    $lastName = array_key_exists("lastName", $params) ?
      $params["lastName"] : "";
    echo $firstName . " " . $lastName;
}

foo(['lastName'=>'smith']);

Of course in this solution there's no validation that the fields of the hash array are present, or spelled correctly. It's all up to you to validate.