Python equivalent for MySQL's IFNULL

Question

Is there a function in Python that checks if the returned value is None and if it is, allows you to set it to another value like the IFNULL function in MySQL?

Answer 1

If you want to convert all "falsy" values (i.e. None, 0, "", [], False, etc.) to a specific value and let everything else through untouched, you can use or. For example:

print (x or default_value)

will print the value of x if it's truthy, and the value of default_value if x is falsy.

I mention this because IFNULL is often used this way to clean up nulls in boolean and numerical columns in a database and so might be what you or others were after. Obviously, if you want to treat None differently to 0, False, etc. this won't work.