Remove empty array elements

Question

Some elements in my array are empty strings based on what the user has submitted. I need to remove those elements. I have this:

foreach($linksArray as $link)         


        

Answer 1

$a = array(1, '', '', '', 2, '', 3, 4);
$b = array_values(array_filter($a));

print_r($b)

Answer 2

I think array_walk is much more suitable here

$linksArray = array('name', '        ', '  342', '0', 0.0, null, '', false);

array_walk($linksArray, function(&$v, $k) use (&$linksArray){
    $v = trim($v);
    if ($v == '')
        unset($linksArray[$k]);
});
print_r($linksArray);

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => name
    [2] => 342
    [3] => 0
    [4] => 0
)

• We made sure that empty values are removed even if the user adds more than one space

• We also trimmed empty spaces from the valid values

• Finally, only (null), (Boolean False) and ('') will be considered empty strings

As for False it's ok to remove it, because AFAIK the user can't submit boolean values.

Answer 3

Another one liner to remove empty ("" empty string) elements from your array.

$array = array_filter($array, function($a) {return $a !== "";});

Note: This code deliberately keeps null, 0 and false elements.

---

Or maybe you want to trim your array elements first:

$array = array_filter($array, function($a) {
    return trim($a) !== "";
});

Note: This code also removes null and false elements.

Answer 4

You can use array_filter to remove empty elements:

$emptyRemoved = array_filter($linksArray);

If you have (int) 0 in your array, you may use the following:

$emptyRemoved = remove_empty($linksArray);

function remove_empty($array) {
  return array_filter($array, '_remove_empty_internal');
}

function _remove_empty_internal($value) {
  return !empty($value) || $value === 0;
}

EDIT: Maybe your elements are not empty per se but contain one or more spaces... You can use the following before using array_filter

$trimmedArray = array_map('trim', $linksArray);

Answer 5

foreach($arr as $key => $val){
   if (empty($val)) unset($arr[$key];
}

Answer 6

In short:

This is my suggested code:

$myarray =  array_values(array_filter(array_map('trim', $myarray), 'strlen'));

Explanation:

I thinks use array_filter is good, but not enough, because values be like space and \n,... keep in the array and this is usually bad.

So I suggest you use mixture ‍‍array_filter and array_map.

array_map is for trimming, array_filter is for remove empty values, strlen is for keep 0 value, and array_values is for re indexing if you needed.

Samples:

$myarray = array("\r", "\n", "\r\n", "", " ", "0", "a");

// "\r", "\n", "\r\n", " ", "a"
$new1 = array_filter($myarray);

// "a"
$new2 = array_filter(array_map('trim', $myarray));

// "0", "a"
$new3 = array_filter(array_map('trim', $myarray), 'strlen');

// "0", "a" (reindex)
$new4 = array_values(array_filter(array_map('trim', $myarray), 'strlen'));

var_dump($new1, $new2, $new3, $new4);

Results:

array(5) {
  [0]=>
" string(1) "
  [1]=>
  string(1) "
"
  [2]=>
  string(2) "
"
  [4]=>
  string(1) " "
  [6]=>
  string(1) "a"
}
array(1) {
  [6]=>
  string(1) "a"
}
array(2) {
  [5]=>
  string(1) "0"
  [6]=>
  string(1) "a"
}
array(2) {
  [0]=>
  string(1) "0"
  [1]=>
  string(1) "a"
}

Online Test:

http://phpio.net/s/5yg0