jQuery: checking if the value of a field is null (empty)

that depends on what kind of information are you passing to the conditional..

sometimes your result will be null or undefined or '' or 0, for my simple validation i use this if.

( $('#id').val() == '0' || $('#id').val() == '' || $('#id').val() == 'undefined' || $('#id').val() == null )

NOTE: null != 'null'

The value of a field can not be null, it's always a string value.

The code will check if the string value is the string "NULL". You want to check if it's an empty string instead:

if ($('#person_data[document_type]').val() != ''){}

or:

if ($('#person_data[document_type]').val().length != 0){}

If you want to check if the element exist at all, you should do that before calling val:

var $d = $('#person_data[document_type]');
if ($d.length != 0) {
  if ($d.val().length != 0 ) {...}
}

Assuming

var val = $('#person_data[document_type]').value();

you have these cases:

val === 'NULL';  // actual value is a string with content "NULL"
val === '';      // actual value is an empty string
val === null;    // actual value is null (absence of any value)

So, use what you need.

I would also trim the input field, cause a space could make it look like filled

if ($.trim($('#person_data[document_type]').val()) != '')
{

}