You should do normally do data = collection.get("key") if data is not None: ... ...

japhyr · 2025-12-21T12:03:31 1766318611

Wouldn't this be a little cleaner?

    data = collection.get("key")
    if data:
        ...
    else:
        ...

pansa2 · 2025-12-21T12:13:16 1766319196

If valid `data` can be zero, an empty string, or anything else “falsy”, then your version won’t handle those values correctly. It treats them the same as `None`, i.e. not found.

japhyr · 2025-12-21T12:34:47 1766320487

:facepalm:

blackbear_ · 2025-12-21T12:56:58 1766321818

No, this would crash with numpy arrays, pandas series and such, with a ValueError: The truth value of an array with more than one element is ambiguous.

IshKebab · 2025-12-21T14:40:54 1766328054

No, truthiness (implicit bool coercion) is another thing you should avoid. This will do weird things if data is a string or a list or whatever.

Shish2k · 2025-12-21T12:11:56 1766319116

That behaves differently (eg if collection["key"] = 0)

tayo42 · 2025-12-21T12:10:08 1766319008

it depends on what's in the if blocks

echoangle · 2025-12-21T13:11:15 1766322675

The value in the collection could be the actual value None, that’s different from the collection not having the key.

eesmith · 2025-12-21T13:55:00 1766325300

    missing = object()
    data = collection.get("key", missing)
    if data is missing:
         ...
    else:
         ....

IshKebab · 2025-12-21T14:39:22 1766327962

That's why I said "normally".