title: empty() not working in PHP
body: <p>I am working with PHP 5.4 and I am submitting a form via POST request, and I want to check to see if one of the values is null, or populated. However the condition does not appear to resolving to true and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. </p>
  
  <p>Here is the code: </p>
  
  <pre><code>        $route = $_POST['route']; 
          echo ("route: " . $route);//this is displaying 'route:null'
  
  
          if(empty($route))
          {
              echo ("route2: " . $route);                 
          }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have also tried to use <code>isset</code> <code>is_null</code> and <code>$route === null</code> <code>$route == null</code></p>
  
  <p>None seem to work .</p>
  
  <p>I have also tried inserting <code>true</code> into the <code>if</code> statement to make sure that true is resolving correctly, but it does. </p>