Check the presence of a key in an array in PHP - The right way

I see this kind of code quite regularly:

$items = [
    'one' => 'John',
    'two' => 'Jane',
];

if (in_array('two', array_keys($items))) {
    // process
}

Although functional, there is a much simpler way to check that a key exists: the array_key_exists() method

$items = [
    'one' => 'John',
    'two' => 'Jane',
];

if (array_key_exists('two', $items)) {
    // process
}

This method will just check the presence of the key, regardless of the associated value.

If we also want to test that the value is not null, we can use the isset() function.

if (isset($items['two'])) {
    // process
}

Thank you for reading, and let's stay in touch !

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