Is PHP @ safe for checking array values ?

It's safe in the sense that it will prevent errors from reporting, however I wouldn't say it is good practice. It's more explicit when you see isset over @, mostly because the code is telling me up front that it's checking for if the array index is set.

Another alternative is to use Laravel's array_get if you don't mind pulling in their helper functions. In this case, you'd have: $name = (array_get($revision, 'data.name')) ?: null; as Laravel's helper will return null automatically for unset indexes. You can also manually set a default value array_get($array, 'foo.bar', 'default');