type casting form values

[poisa]

Say we have a radio button "isActive" in a form that returns either true or false. We then want to work with that radio button in conditions like so:

if ($isActive) {
    // do stuff
}

Bu the value returned from the form is a string, so we would have to use something like:

if ($isActive == 'true') {
    // do stuff
}

Is there a way to cast this value to a bool without doing something like this?:

if ($isActive == 'true') {
    $isActive = true;
} else {
    $isActive = false;
}

[laserlight]

Why not substitute "0" for the "false" value in the form, and "1" for the "true" value then?

[poisa]

laserlight, that's a valid option, but in this case in particular I can't modify the code that generates the HTML.

[laserlight]

In that case you're limited to comparing with "true", though you could write a function to simplify it somewhat.