help with checking if variable is NULL

[da_marek]

hello!
im having a little problem with showing my database results.
i have two collums named
'artist_1' and 'artist_2'.
what i want is to show 1st artist name and 2nd artist name (but only if there is one!!) and it MUST be formatted like this:
1st artist / 2nd artist
but if there is only one artist then like this:
1st artist (without slash '/')

i tried to write code that looks like this:

---

// connection to database and all other stuff //

echo $row["artist_1"];

if (is_null($artist_2))
{
echo "<br>";
}
else
{
echo " / ";
echo $row["artist_2"];
echo "<br>";
}

// other stuff //

---

AND IT WON'T WORK!!! the result is only 1st artist name!

can someone please help me? what am i doing wrong?
i know this is very small problem but im new in php and i still don't know lots of things... please help!

[cgraz]

whre is $artist2 coming from in this line of code

if (is_null($artist_2))

shouldn't it be $row["artist_2"]

anyways, you can check the string length (using the function strlen()). If the string length of $row["artist_2"] is greater than 0, then echo it. Something like this

echo $row["artist_1"];

if (strlen($row["artist_2"]) > '0') {
   echo " / " . $row["artist_2"];
} else {
   echo "<br>";
}

Cgraz

[da_marek]

hey thaks a lot! that was really fast! and it works just fine!

[da_marek]

hi! its me again!
this script above is working just fine as i said before but im still in problem...
and that is what when i have to check for 2 more variables?
i want to say that i have 4 columns named:
'label_1', 'label_2', 'label_3' and 'label_4'.
i wrote this in my code:

---

echo $row["label_1"];

if (strlen($row["label_2"]) > '0') {
echo " / " . $row["label_2"];
echo <br>";
}

else
{
echo <br>";
}

---

but when i try another
'if (strlen($row["label_3"]) > '0').....'
i get some error... is there any quick sollution for this?
thanks a lot! 😉

[diego25]

What error do you get? And can you show us the code around that error line?

Diego

[MeX]

hi marek!

at first, use default values in you DB never NULL values!! 😉

and try this:

if (strlen($row['label_2']) != 0) {

ceeyaa.MeX