Remove empty elements from an array in Javascript

Question

How do I remove empty elements from an array in JavaScript?

Is there a straightforward way, or do I need to loop through it and remove them manually?

Answer 1

Simple ES6

['a','b','',,,'w','b'].filter(v => v);

Answer 2

Since nobody else mentioned it and most people have underscore included in their project you can also use _.without(array, *values);.

_.without(["text", "string", null, null, null, "text"], null)
// => ["text", "string", "text"]

Answer 3

The clean way to do it.

var arr = [0,1,2,"Thomas","false",false,true,null,3,4,undefined,5,"end"];
arr = arr.filter(Boolean);
// [1, 2, "Thomas", "false", true, 3, 4, 5, "end"]

Answer 4

If using a library is an option I know underscore.js has a function called compact() http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/ it also has several other useful functions related to arrays and collections.

Here is an excerpt from their documentation:

_.compact(array)

Returns a copy of the array with all falsy values removed. In JavaScript, false, null, 0, "", undefined and NaN are all falsy.

_.compact([0, 1, false, 2, '', 3]);

=> [1, 2, 3]

Answer 5

This works, I tested it in AppJet (you can copy-paste the code on its IDE and press "reload" to see it work, don't need to create an account)

/* appjet:version 0.1 */
function Joes_remove(someArray) {
    var newArray = [];
    var element;
    for( element in someArray){
        if(someArray[element]!=undefined ) {
            newArray.push(someArray[element]);
        }
    }
    return newArray;
}

var myArray2 = [1,2,,3,,3,,,0,,,4,,4,,5,,6,,,,];

print("Original array:", myArray2);
print("Clenased array:", Joes_remove(myArray2) );
/*
Returns: [1,2,3,3,0,4,4,5,6]
*/

Answer 6

foo = [0, 1, 2, "", , false, 3, "four", null]

foo.filter(function(e) {
    return e === 0 ? '0' : e
})

returns

[0, 1, 2, 3, "four"]