A template of a function being applied to a CodeIgniter Helper file, the If statement checks if the function is already loaded, this is a good convention, it also means if you want to simulate a function not included in a current PHP version but is in a later one it'll be swapped in.

helper.php

if ( ! function_exists('element'))
{
  function element($item, $array, $default = FALSE)
	{
		if ( ! isset($array[$item]) OR $array[$item] == "")
		{
			return $default;
		}

		return $array[$item];
	}	
}