Assign by reference with PHP's ternary operator

Setting a PHP variable to one of two values, depending on some third value, is easily achieved with a ternary expression.

$name = isAuthor() ? $authorName : 'John Doe';

But if you want to assign the variable with a reference you run into problems. Syntax errors to be precise.

$name = isAuthor() ? &$authorName : 'John Doe';

PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘&’ in …

Solutions

There are two ways to solve this. Either you assign the variable in the ternary expression.

$name = isAuthor() ? $name = &$authorName : 'John Doe';

Or pick from one of two references using a dynamic variable name.

$name = &${isAuthor() ? 'authorName' : 'otherName'};

Video

The people over at Webucator have put together a short video where they go over this solution. They asked if I could link to their PHP training course and I feel this is good enough SEO work that I’ll bite. :)