Prefered way for if else statements

The CMS Questions
1

I know it’s totally not related to Kirby, but is there a prefered way for if else statements? Example:

$img_cmp_bw = false;
if ( $data->img_cmp_bw()->bool() ) {
  $img_cmp_bw = true;
}

or the other method

if ( $data->img_cmp_bw()->bool() ) {
  $img_cmp_bw = true;
} else {
  $img_cmp_bw = false;
}
2

The if statement is not really necessary at all in this case:

$img_cmp_bw = $data->img_cmp_bw()->bool();

If field doesn’t exist or is empty or is false it will return false, else true.

For other simple use cases, ternary operators are useful:

$var = $page->test()->isNotEmpty() ? $page->test() : 'fallback';

Here we check if the field is empty, and use the value if not and a fallback if yes.

For this particular case, Kirby has a shorter way of doing this with or():

$var = $page->test()->or('fallback');

Or the null coalesce operator:

$username = $_GET['user'] ?? 'nobody';

In this example, the variable is set to $_GET['user'] if it is set and falls back to nobody if not.

But to answer your question, I’d probably go with the first option, less lines of code;

1 Like
3

Amazing explanation!!! Exactly what I was looking for, thanks :slight_smile: