Avoid showing icons that don't contain a value - php

Question

I've already been searching for a couple of hours for a solution. What I want to do is make icons that don't got a value (in the php) not show up.
Here's an image of what I currently have.
So for instance if only twitter and facebook got values, they should only appear on the screen.
Below is the code, and I hope someone got a solution for this.
Cheers!
<ul class="social-buttons">
<div class="wrapping">
<a class="social" href="http://twitter.com/<?php echo $profile_data['twitter']; ?>" target="_blank"><li class="twitter"></li></a>
<a class="social" href="http://facebook.com/<?php echo $profile_data['facebook']; ?>" target="_blank"><li class="facebook"></li></a>
<a class="social" href="skype:<?php echo $profile_data['skype']; ?>?chat"><li class="skype"></li></a>
<a class="social" href="http://instagram.com/<?php echo $profile_data['instagram']; ?>"><li class="instagram"></li></a>
<a class="social" href="http://dribbble.com/<?php echo $profile_data['dribbble']; ?>"><li class="dribbble"></li></a>
<a class="social" href="http://linkedin.com/in/<?php echo $profile_data['linkedin']; ?>"><li class="linkedin"></li></a>
</div>
</ul>

Answer 1

You need to use the if statement with !empty(). The !empty() checks if a variable is NOT empty. Than proceed with the code. Like the example given here:
<?php
if(!empty($profile_data['twitter'])){
?>
<a class="social" href="http://twitter.com/<?php echo $profile_data['twitter']; ?>" target="_blank"><li class="twitter"></li></a>
<?php
}
?>
If the variable is empty, it wont give the outputed code, in your case the <a> with the icon.

Answer 2

i think you can do like:
<ul class="social-buttons">
<div class="wrapping">
<?php if $profile_data['twitter'] {?>
<a class="social" href="http://twitter.com/<?php echo $profile_data['twitter']; ?>" target="_blank"><li class="twitter"></li></a>
<?php } ?>
....
</ul>
Imo, a probably better way to do this is to perform a pre-processing of the data i.e. $profile_data, before you use it in your view so the view would no longer need to handle the processing logic. After which, the view can output your links by using a more concise construct e.g. for loop, that does not use any conditional branching.