Re: [Pre-RFC] Null coalescing associative array elements

On Fri, May 29, 2026, at 11:58 AM, Alexander Egorov wrote: > array_filter will only cover the cases when you need to filter all > fields by the same criteria (null's in this case). > But it does not fit the case when you still have some mandatory fields > even if they are null, but some are optional. > At least in the simplest form, but otherwise in more complex forms > we'll still come up with additional code. A data format that has a mix of required-even-if-null and optional fields is a broken data format. We should not design language features around a broken data format. (I realize that the broken data format is often provided by a 3rd party, not the PHP developer, so it's not the PHP developer's fault that the data format is broken. But the point stands that we should not build around that.) >> My second thought is that this is yet another reason why using associative arrays as if >> they were a data structure is wrong and should be avoided; just use a class and everything will be >> fine. If you need to serialize it later, there's many serializers on the market if >> JsonSerialize isn't sufficient. > > Wrong or not, using arrays as an intermediate for serializing is still > very common. > Also, it is a common case when developers have their in-house > serialization mechanisms. > > But whatever serialization you use, the serialization library by itself will > still need to perform corresponding "if"'s or other logic to > conditionally include/exclude the fields. > So, such feature can prove useful for serialization libraries themselves. > > Another thing is that we don't only work with production-ready code > which presumably already > has or should have a proper "infrastructure" for serialization. We can > still work with some draft > or MVP projects where we need to do things fast and simple first. And > such feature can prove handy. Disclosure: I am the author of Crell/Serde, one of the aforementioned serialization libraries. It's also super easy to just "drop into" a project and start using, even without wiring it into a container or anything. And I wouldn't make use of this feature, as it doesn't fit the way Serde works to begin with. --Larry Garfield