Delete all empty sub-array in array

Question

How can I filter array and delete all empty elements. I need to remove empty elements from an array, including arrays in arrays.

From that array:

$array = [
    'ip' => '127.0.0.1',
    'user_agent' => 'dkdkdk',
    '_id' => 'fjjfjf',
    'user' => [
        'longName' => '', 
        'shortName' => '',
        'username' => [
            'a' => 'b',
            'c' => ''
            ]
    ],
    'dsd' => [
        'zz' => [
            'dd' => [
                'ff' => ''
                ]
            ]
        ]
    ],
    'dsddd' => '',
    'vcv' => null,
    'aavx' => 0
];

I want get:

$array = [
    'ip' => '127.0.0.1',
    'user_agent' => 'dkdkdk',
    '_id' => 'fjjfjf',
    'user' => [
        'username' => [
            'a' => 'b',
            ]
    ],
    'aavx' => 0
];

I try use array_filter but it remove only not array keys

https://stackoverflow.com/a/6795671/1427878 - modify accordingly, so that the filtering happens by your specific criterion. — CBroe, Mar 23 '20 at 14:41
(And please pay a bit more attention when showing example data. What you have currently shown, is not even syntactically valid.) — CBroe, Mar 23 '20 at 14:53
Does this answer your question? [PHP - How to remove empty entries of an array recursively?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7696548/php-how-to-remove-empty-entries-of-an-array-recursively) — M. Volf, Mar 23 '20 at 17:11

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 23 '20 at 15:23

To remove all empty arrays or keys, you will have to iterate recursively and pass value by reference to the subsequent recursive calls to make sure you edit the same copy of the subarray. Now, you can just have empty checks and unset them.

function removeEmptyArrays(&$array){
    foreach($array as $key => &$value){
        if(is_array($value)) removeEmptyArrays($value);
        if(is_array($value) && count($value) == 0 || is_null($value) || is_string($value) && strlen($value) == 0) unset($array[$key]);
    }
}

Demo: https://3v4l.org/XDJdD

Delete all empty sub-array in array

1 Answers1