With PHP 8 The concept of an unfound array key was promoted from a NOTICE error level to a WARNING error level.
This causes us huge code and error_log bloats where we turn off notices and retain warnings on error logs which end up being filled with repetative warnings about array key existance.
For example; Some code to check if a SESSION value exists and if so then use it in some local code. SESSION value is set in some other part of the website and is dynamically set.
<?php
// This code is server side action example
include whatever_header.php //sets session start etc.
if($_SESSION['action'] === "submit"){
...
}
$localPageDataArray = $_SESSION['core']['data']?:['default' => 'no'];
Previous to PHP 8, if $_SESSION action was not set it didn't matter, because the if condition only executed if it was set to a specific value. To be clear; if $_SESSION['action'] was never set then the code would work in exactly the same way as if $_SESSION['action'] === "sleep" , ie various conditionals would still fire or not fire accordingly.
NOW, the error logs blow up with various warnings such as:
PHP Warning: Undefined array key "action" in /home/public_html/session_test_script.php on line 5
PHP Warning: Undefined array key "data" in /home/public_html/session_test_script.php on line 9
There are a couple of issues with this warning feedback:
It blows up and hugely inflates the error logs
It causes huge code bloat to workaround this issue:
Example of code bloat being to resolve the above warning would be:
<?php
// This code is server side action example
include whatever_header.php //sets session start etc.
if(array_key_exists('action',$_SESSION) && $_SESSION['action'] === "submit"){
...
}
Or even worse:
<?php
// This code is server side action example
include whatever_header.php //sets session start etc.
if(array_key_exists('action',$_SESSION) && $_SESSION['action'] === "submit"){
...
}
$localPageDataArray = ['default' => 'no']; //default value if below IF is false
if(array_key_exists($_SESSION,'core') && is_array($_SESSION['core'])
&& array_key_exists($_SESSION['core'],'data') {
$localPageDataArray = $_SESSION['core']['data']?:['default' => 'no'];
}
This is a huge bloat on the code for absolutely zero benefit aside from removing tedious warning messages from the error logs. Because the issue has been promoted to WARNING level then we can't realistically turn of WARNING logs as that's a bad idea for genuine warnings.
While we can slightly streamline the above to being an isset check thus:
if(isset($_SESSION['core']['data']) && is_array($_SESSION['core']['data'])) {
$localPageDataArray = $_SESSION['core']['data']?:['default' => 'no'];
}
This still greatly inflates the code size for zero practical improvment.
Question
Are there any workarounds to how to easily and efficiently avoid these Warning error log messages without having to deal with multiple lines of hard coding checking processes?
Note that these issues are due to $_SESSION (and sometimes other superglobal data) being dynamically generated so we can't always ensure that a value exists and that's built into the default checking mechanisms as illustrated here.
If we can do the above with one line, this would be a great compromise:
$localPageDataArray = isset($_SESSION['core']['data'])?$_SESSION['core']['data']:['default' => 'no'];
BUT This only sets the default value (['default' => 'no']) if the $_SESSION['core']['data'] is not set, rather than if it is set and is empty
Not a Dupe
This question is not a dupe because I'm not caring about speed (although it's nice isset is so fast) but asking about how to avoid the error_log Warning messages found in PHP 8+ which are a different issue to speed.
