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
, andh1
). Thediv
element is just a wrapper for the rest of the elements. - The
innerText
for thebutton
element is“Check”
and for theh1
element, it is“Result”
. - We have done some basic styling using CSS and added the link to our
style.css
stylesheet inside thehead
element. - We have also included our javascript file
script.js
with ascript
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 andh1
element using thedocument.querySelector()
method and stored them inbtnCheck
andresult
variables respectively. - We have a global variable
myVar
which holds a boolean as its value. - We have attached a
click
event listener to thebutton
element. - In the event handler function, we are calling
checkVariable()
method and passing itmyVar
as a parameter. This method will verify whethermyVar
is true or false. - In the
checkVariable()
method, we are using strict equality (===
) and ternary (?
) operators as well asswitch
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 theinnerText
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"; } }