Solution
echo $person->middleName ?? 'Person does not have a middle name';
To show how this would look in an if statement for more clarity on how this is working.
if($person->middleName ?? false) {
echo $person->middleName;
} else {
echo 'Person does not have a middle name';
}
Explanation
The traditional PHP way to check for something's existence is to do:
if(isset($person->middleName)) {
echo $person->middleName;
} else {
echo 'Person does not have a middle name';
}
OR for a more class specific way:
if(property_exists($person, 'middleName')) {
echo $person->middleName;
} else {
echo 'Person does not have a middle name';
}
These are both fine in long form statements but in ternary statements they become unnecessarily cumbersome like so:
isset($person->middleName) ? echo $person->middleName : echo 'Person does not have a middle name';
You can also achieve this with just the ternary operator like so:
echo $person->middleName ?: 'Person does not have a middle name';
But... if the value does not exist (is not set) it will raise an E_NOTICE
and is not best practise. If the value is null
it will not raise the exception.
Therefore ternary operator to the rescue making this a neat little answer:
echo $person->middleName ?? 'Person does not have a middle name';