PHP - Get bool to echo false when false

Question

The following code doesn\'t print out anything:

$bool_val = (bool)false;
echo $bool_val;

But the following code prints 1:

Answer 1

json_encode will do it out-of-the-box, but it's not pretty (indented, etc):

echo json_encode(array('whatever' => TRUE, 'somethingelse' => FALSE));

...gives...

{"whatever":true,"somethingelse":false}

Answer 2

Try converting your boolean to an integer?

 echo (int)$bool_val;

Answer 3

The %b option of sprintf() will convert a boolean to an integer:

echo sprintf("False will print as %b", false); //False will print as 0
echo sprintf("True will print as %b", true); //True will print as 1

If you're not familiar with it: You can give this function an arbitrary amount of parameters while the first one should be your ouput string spiced with replacement strings like %b or %s for general string replacement.

Each pattern will be replaced by the argument in order:

echo sprintf("<h1>%s</h1><p>%s<br/>%s</p>", "Neat Headline", "First Line in the paragraph", "My last words before this demo is over");

Answer 4

This gives 0 or 1:

intval($bool_val);

PHP Manual: intval function

Answer 5

echo $bool_val ? 'true' : 'false';

Or if you only want output when it's false:

echo !$bool_val ? 'false' : '';

Answer 6

This is the easiest way to do this:

$text = var_export($bool_value,true);
echo $text;

or

var_export($bool_value)

If the second argument is not true, it will output the result directly.