Is there an idiomatic way to get a potentially undefined key from an array in PHP?

Question

PHPeoples, I\'m so tired of doing this

$value = isset($arr[$key]) ? $arr[$key] : null;

Or this

$value = array_key_exists($k         


        

Answer 1

If you need to make sure certain keys exist then you can create a default array and merge in your input (or whatever). That way all necessary keys will exist and they will be updated if possible:

$defaults = array(
    'foo' => '',
    'bar' => ''
);

$data = array_merge($defaults, $someOtherArray);

Docs for array_merge(): http://php.net/array_merge

I find this helpful when taking into consideration check-boxes on a HTML form that may or may not show up in $_GET or $_POST.

Note that this process expects string array keys, not numeric ones. See the documentation for clarification.