Checking if a $_COOKIE value is empty or not

Question

I assign a cookie to a variable:

$user_cookie = $_COOKIE["user"];

How can I check if the $user_cookie received some value or not?

Should I use if (empty($user_cookie)) or something else?

Answer 1

These are the things empty will return true for:

• "" (empty string)
• 0 (0 as an integer)
• 0.0 (0 as float)
• "0" (0 as string)
• NULL
• FALSE
• array() (an empty array)
• var $var; (a declared variable not in a class)

Taken straight from the php manual

So to answer your question, yes, empty() will be a perfectly acceptable function, and in this instance I'd prefer it over isset()