How to Check if a Variable is True or False in Javascript

In this tutorial, you will learn how to check if a variable is true or false in javascript. A boolean is one of the primitive data types in javascript. It can have only two values, true or false.

There are numerous ways to check if a variable is true or false. We are going to use one of the easiest solutions which involve the usage of the strict equality (===) and ternary (?) operators.  The strict equality operator verifies whether its two operands are equal or not and it returns either true or false. The ternary operator is also known as the conditional operator which acts similar to the if-else statement.

In the following example, we have one global variable and upon click of a button, we will check if the variable is true or false and display the result on the screen.  Please have a look over the code example and the steps given below.

HTML & CSS

  • We have 3 elements in the HTML file (div, button, and h1). The div element is just a wrapper for the rest of the elements.
  • The innerText for the button element is “Check” and for the h1 element, it is “Result”.
  • We have done some basic styling using CSS and added the link to our style.css stylesheet inside the head element.
  • We have also included our javascript file script.js with a script tag at the bottom.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
    <title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>
    
    <div>
        <button>Check</button>
        <h1>Result</h1>
    </div>

    <script src="script.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
body {
    text-align: center;
}

div {
    display: inline-block;
}

button {
    display: inline-block;
    padding: 10px 20px;
}

Javascript

  • We have selected the button element and h1 element using the document.querySelector() method and stored them in btnCheck and result variables respectively.
  • We have a global variable myVar which holds a boolean as its value.
  • We have attached a click event listener to the button element.
  • In the event handler function, we are calling checkVariable() method and passing it myVar as a parameter. This method will verify whether myVar is true or false.
  • In the checkVariable() method, we are using strict equality (===) and ternary (?) operators as well as switch statement for verification. Depending upon the result of the check, this method will return "True", “False”,  or “Not True or False”.
  • We are displaying the returned value in the h1 element using the innerText property.
let btnCheck = document.querySelector("button");
let result = document.querySelector("h1");

let myVar = false;
btnCheck.addEventListener("click", () => {
  result.innerText = checkVariable(myVar);
});


function checkVariable(value) {
  let output = value === true ? 1 : 0;
  if (output === 0) output = value === false ? 2 : 0;
  switch (output) {
    case 1:
      return "True";
    case 2:
      return "False";
    default:
      return "Not True or False";
  }
}