Add null check in get_field_value_for_new_entry

[Crabcyborg]

Supersedes #3332.

We don't typically type cast null, but prefer checks instead.

[coderabbitai]

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• classes/helpers/FrmEntriesHelper.php

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[deepsource-io]

DeepSource Code Review

We reviewed changes in ce07629...592d879 on this pull request. Below is the summary for the review, and you can see the individual issues we found as inline review comments.

See full review on DeepSource ↗

PR Report Card

Overall Grade

Security   Reliability   Complexity   Hygiene

Code Review Summary

Analyzer	Status	Updated (UTC)	Details
PHP		Oct 13, 2026 6:13p.m.	Review ↗
JavaScript		Oct 13, 2026 6:13p.m.	Review ↗

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[franky-the-going-merry]

Approve. The fix does what it says and changes nothing else.

Bug reproduced, before and after (local WP Playground, PHP 8.5.10, E_ALL + display_errors). I made a form with four fields whose default_value is NULL in the DB (text, email, textarea, select) and ran FrmFormsController::get_form_shortcode() on it.

• Base (518b4aeb): Deprecated: str_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in FrmEntriesHelper.php on line 137.
• This PR (592d879c): no deprecation. The output HTML is identical to base apart from the deprecation's own <br /> and a random honeypot id.

Old vs new behavior, every input type (php run against copies of both versions): null, '', '0', 'Hello', 'He said "hi"', ['a','b'], [] all return the same value as before. The only difference is that null no longer raises the deprecation. The array branch's ?? '' is a no-op, so nothing is lost there.

CI. Most analysis jobs are skipped on this draft; Psalm, typos and the third-party checks pass. I did not run PHPUnit locally. I read the diff by hand rather than running code-review/security-review, since it is three lines in one function with no security surface. This is the only str_replace() on a possibly-null default in that function, so there is no sibling instance to patch.

Not exercised: no browser or screenshot check, because there is no visual change (the HTML output is identical). Submitting the form and the posted-value path were not run; they are unchanged by this diff.

No findings.