Best way to check for positive integer (PHP)?

Question

I need to check for a form input value to be a positive integer (not just an integer), and I noticed another snippet using the code below:

$i = $user_input_v         


        

Answer 1

The best way for checking for positive integers when the variable can be INTEGER or STRING representing the integer:

 if ((is_int($value) || ctype_digit($value)) && (int)$value > 0 ) { // int }

is_int() will return true if the value type is integer. ctype_digit() will return true if the type is string but the value of the string is an integer.

The difference between this check and is_numeric() is that is_numeric() will return true even for the values that represent numbers that are not integers (e.g. "+0.123").