PHP Variables – Check if a variable is an array

In this post we will be creating PHP script that will check if an existing variable is an array, to do this we will be using the ‘is_array()’ function.

See our array of items for our first example below.

$array = array('James', 'Dustin', 'Billy', 'Amy', 'Shelly');

In the snippet of PHP code below we are applying the ‘is_array()’ function to check whether a variable is an array. Here we are also manipulating the output depending on weather True or False is returned.

<?php
$array = array('James', 'Dustin', 'Billy', 'Amy', 'Shelly');
echo is_array($array) ? '$array is array' : '$array is not Array';
?>

The above would return the following as output.

$array is an array

See below another example where our variable is clearly not an array.

<?php
$not_an_array = "Hello World";
echo is_array($not_an_array) ? '$not_an_array is an array' : '$not_an_array is not an Array';

?>

The above would return the following as output.

$not_an_array is not an Array

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