best way to check a empty array?

Question

How can I check an array recursively for empty content like this example:

Array
(
    [product_data] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
               


        

Answer 1

If anyone stumbles on this question and needs to check if the entire array is NULL, meaning that each pair in the array is equal to null, this is a handy function. You could very easily modify it to return true if any variable returns NULL as well. I needed this for a certain web form where it updated users data and it was possible for it to come through completely blank, therefor not needing to do any SQL.

$test_ary = array("1"=>NULL, "2"=>NULL, "3"=>NULL);

function array_empty($ary, $full_null=false){
    $null_count = 0;
    $ary_count = count($ary);

    foreach($ary as $value){
        if($value == NULL){
            $null_count++;
        }
    }

    if($full_null == true){
        if($null_count == $ary_count){
            return true;
        }else{
            return false;
        }
    }else{
        if($null_count > 0){
            return true;
        }else{
            return false;
        }
    }
}

$test = array_empty($test_ary, $full_null=true);
echo $test;

Answer 2

Returns TRUE if passed a variable other than an array, or if any of the nested arrays contains a value (including falsy values!). Returns FALSE otherwise. Short circuits.

function has_values($var) {
  if (is_array($var)) {
    if (empty($var)) return FALSE;
    foreach ($var as $val) {
      if(has_values($val)) return TRUE;
    }
    return FALSE;
  } 
  return TRUE;
}

Answer 3

Solution with array_walk_recursive:

function empty_recursive($value)
{
        if (is_array($value)) {
                $empty = TRUE;
                array_walk_recursive($value, function($item) use (&$empty) {
                        $empty = $empty && empty($item);
                });
        } else {
                $empty = empty($value);
        }
        return $empty;
}

Answer 4

Here's a good utility function that will return true (1) if the array is empty, or false (0) if not:

function is_array_empty( $mixed ) {
    if ( is_array($mixed) ) {
        foreach ($mixed as $value) {
            if ( ! is_array_empty($value) ) {
                return false;
            }
        }
    } elseif ( ! empty($mixed) ) {
        return false;
    }

    return true;
}

For example, given a multidimensional array:

$products = array(
    'product_data' => array(
        0 => array(
            'title' => '',
            'description' => null,
            'price' => '',
        ),
    ),
);

You'll get a true value returned from is_array_empty(), since there are no values set:

var_dump( is_array_empty($products) );

View this code interactively at: http://codepad.org/l2C0Efab

Answer 5

If your array is only one level deep you can also do:

if (strlen(implode('', $array)) == 0)

Works in most cases :)

Answer 6

Assuming the array will always contain the same type of data:

function TestNotEmpty($arr) {
    foreach($arr as $item)
        if(isset($item->title) || isset($item->descrtiption || isset($item->price))
            return true;
    return false;
}