How to set PHP not to check undefind index for $_GET when E_NOTICE is on?

Question

When E_NOTICE is set to on, PHP will report undefined index for arrays. I want to suppress this error for $_GET only. Is there any way to do that other than prepend

Answer 1

The best method is to check for the existence of the array key before you use it each time, using isset.

So instead of

$cow=(int)$_GET['cow'];

do

if(isset($_GET['cow'])){ $cow=(int)$_GET['cow']; }

That's verbose, however. So, you can wrap this in a function such as

function get($key_name){
  return isset($_GET[$key_name])?$_GET[$key_name]:null;
  }

and then,

$cow=get('cow');

Answer 2

If you don't want to modify all the $_GET references in your code, you could create your own error handler to PHP, by using set_error_handler function

Example (completely untested, but shows the idea):

function myErrHandler ($errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline) {
    if(strstr("GET", $errstr)) {
        // suppress message
        return true;
    }

    // otherwise, continue with PHP internal error handler
    return false;
}

set_error_handler("myErrHandler", E_NOTICE);

Answer 3

The proper solution is to use something like isset or array_key_exists first, thus making sure your code successfully handles things when the array index is outright missing, as opposed to '' or zero:

$foo = array_key_exists('foo', $_GET) ? $_GET['foo'] : 'Whoops!';