Remove empty entries in associated array php

Question

I have tried all the solutions suggested in this post but have not been able to make them work in my case.

My array :

array(2) {
  ["number_s"]=>
  array(14) {
    [0]=>
    string(2) "22"
    [1]=>
    string(2) "23"
    [2]=>
    string(0) ""
    [3]=>
    string(0) ""
    [4]=>
    string(0) ""
  }
  ["player_name"]=>
  array(14) {
    [0]=>
    string(9) "John Doe"
    [1]=>
    string(11) "Jack Sparrow"
    [2]=>
    string(0) ""
    [3]=>
    string(0) ""
    [4]=>
    string(0) ""
  }
}

I would like to remove all the empty entries but how to do that ?

Thanks a lot for help

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 01 '22 at 09:09

It seems like array_filter for each subarray will do what you want.

$array['number_s'] = array_filter($array['number_s']);
$array['player_name'] = array_filter($array['player_name']);

When called without callback function it just removes all empty entries. See docs for details.

But be aware that it will remove "0" and all values which considered empty.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 02 '22 at 01:41

Assuming there aren't arbitrary numbers of subarrays, you may transverse them (as references) and use unset to remove them from the array:

foreach ($array as &$subarray) {
  foreach ($subarray as $key => $value) {
    if (empty($value)) {
      unset($subarray[$key]);
    } 
  }
}

It's simpler with a functional approach:

$array = array_map(
  fn($subarray) => array_filter($subarray),
  $array
);

If the array may have arbitrary levels, you may implement a recursive function:

function remove_empty_recursive(array &$array)
{
  foreach($array as $key => &$value) {
    if (empty($value)) {
      unset($array[$key]);
    } elseif (is_array($value)) {
      remove_empty_recursive($value);
    }
  }
}

Notice all those solutions assume you want to remove "0", 0 and false from the array. Otherwise, you need to specify another criteria, instead of using empty. For instance:

$array = array_map(
  fn($subarray) => array_filter(
    $subarray,
    fn($value) => !empty($value) || is_numeric($value) || $value === false
  ),
  $array
);

Remove empty entries in associated array php

2 Answers2