IF statement php displaying content if another is empty

I have some fields (WordPress) and sometimes one of them is empty. I want to display the content of ‘the_excerpt’ when the ‘short_description’ is not filled in.

here is what I came with:

    if (empty(the_field('short_description'))) {
      the_excerpt();
    } else {
      the_field('short_description'); 
    }

Unfortunately it displays both short_description and the except after that. What is wrong here? Do I miss something? For me the code looks good.

Answer

To Check if value exists first use get_field() function instead of the_field()

Please have a look on example which shows how to check if a value exists before displaying it.

<?php if( get_field('short_description') ): ?>
    <?php the_field('short_description'); ?>
<?php else: ?>
   <?php  the_excerpt(); ?>
<?php endif; ?>

Or you can user in another way like :

$isValue = get_field( "short_description" );
if( $isValue ) {
  echo $isValue ;
} else {
  the_excerpt();
}