Undefined index when setting WordPress custom options variables? - wordpress

Question

I have my custom options set like this...
function my_options_init(){
register_setting(
'myoptions',
'myoptions',
'myoptions_validate'
);
}
add_action( 'admin_init', 'my_options_init' );
...and I'm used to setting variables on my custom settings page in this manner...
$myoptions = get_option( 'myoptions' );
$foo = $myoptions['foo'];
But when debugging is enabled I get an error:
Notice: Undefined index: foo
The solution as I understand it is to do this...
if(isset($myoptions['foo'])) {
$foo = $myoptions['foo'];
}
..which makes the error go away.
The problem is that I have many variables I want to use in my plugin, and it seems like a lot of unnecessary work to do this every time I need to use a variable.
Then I stumbled on this in another topic:
"...to avoid having to include this check everytime you are getting a
setting from $myoptions - would be to review your
myoptions() function and make sure it returns an
array that includes every setting, including default values for those
settings that are not saved in the database yet."
My question is, how would I go about doing that?

Answer 1

You can setup a function for default values. Then when you fetch plugin option, you can fetch options with defaults. After that even if there is no options in the database, function will get value from default. So no PHP notice. Please check following example.
function wpso_get_default_options() {
// Default plugin options.
$default = array(
'foo' => 1,
'bar' => 'left',
);
return $default;
}
function wpso_get_plugin_option( $key ) {
$defaults = wpso_get_default_options();
$plugin_options = get_option( 'myoptions' );
$plugin_options = wp_parse_args( $plugin_options, $defaults );
$value = null;
if ( isset( $plugin_options[ $key ] ) ) {
$value = $plugin_options[ $key ];
}
return $value;
}