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. 

Here is the code: 

```
        $route = $_POST['route']; 
        echo ("route: " . $route);//this is displaying 'route:null'

        if(empty($route))
        {
            echo ("route2: " . $route);                 
        }

```

I have also tried to use `isset` `is_null` and `$route === null` `$route == null`

None seem to work .

I have also tried inserting `true` into the `if` statement to make sure that true is resolving correctly, but it does.