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

I'm simply adding my voice to the above “call ES5's Array..filter() with a global constructor” golf-hack, but I suggest using Object instead of String, Boolean, or Number as suggested above.

Specifically, ES5's filter() already doesn't trigger for undefined elements within the array; so a function that universally returns true, which returns all elements filter() hits, will necessarily only return non-undefined elements:

> [1,,5,6,772,5,24,5,'abc',function(){},1,5,,3].filter(function(){return true})
[1, 5, 6, 772, 5, 24, 5, 'abc', function (){}, 1, 5, 3]

However, writing out ...(function(){return true;}) is longer than writing ...(Object); and the return-value of the Object constructor will be, under any circumstances, some sort of object. Unlike the primitive-boxing-constructors suggested above, no possible object-value is falsey, and thus in a boolean setting, Object is a short-hand for function(){return true}.

> [1,,5,6,772,5,24,5,'abc',function(){},1,5,,3].filter(Object)
[1, 5, 6, 772, 5, 24, 5, 'abc', function (){}, 1, 5, 3]

Answer 2

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

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

returns

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

Answer 3

var data = [null, 1,2,3];
var r = data.filter(function(i){ return i != null; })

---

console.log(r) 

[1,2,3]

Answer 4

'Misusing' the for ... in (object-member) loop. => Only truthy values appear in the body of the loop.

// --- Example ----------
var field = [];

field[0] = 'One';
field[1] = 1;
field[3] = true;
field[5] = 43.68;
field[7] = 'theLastElement';
// --- Example ----------

var originalLength;

// Store the length of the array.
originalLength = field.length;

for (var i in field) {
  // Attach the truthy values upon the end of the array. 
  field.push(field[i]);
}

// Delete the original range within the array so that
// only the new elements are preserved.
field.splice(0, originalLength);

Answer 5

This one will only remove empty values and not falsey ones, which I think is more desirable.

There is an option to also remove null values.

This method should be much faster than using splice.

    function cleanArray(a, removeNull) {
        var i, l, temp = [];
        l = a.length;
        if (removeNull) {
            for (i = 0; i < l; i++) {
                if (a[i] !== undefined && a[i] !== null) {
                    temp.push(a[i]);
                }
            }
        } else {
            for (i = 0; i < l; i++) {
                if (a[i] !== undefined) {
                    temp.push(a[i]);
                }
            }
        }
        a.length = 0;
        l = temp.length;
        for (i = 0; i < l; i++) {
            a[i] = temp[i];
        }
        temp.length = 0;
        return a;
    }
    var myArray = [1, 2, , 3, , 3, , , 0, , null, false, , NaN, '', 4, , 4, , 5, , 6, , , , ];
    cleanArray(myArray);
    myArray;

Answer 6

If anyone is looking for cleaning the whole Array or Object this might help.

var qwerty = {
    test1: null,
    test2: 'somestring',
    test3: 3,
    test4: {},
    test5: {
        foo: "bar"
    },
    test6: "",
    test7: undefined,
    test8: " ",
    test9: true,
    test10: [],
    test11: ["77","88"],
    test12: {
        foo: "foo",
        bar: {
            foo: "q",
            bar: {
                foo:4,
                bar:{}
            }
        },
        bob: {}
    }
}

var asdfg = [,,"", " ", "yyyy", 78, null, undefined,true, {}, {x:6}, [], [2,3,5]];

function clean_data(obj) {
    for (var key in obj) {
        // Delete null, undefined, "", " "
        if (obj[key] === null || obj[key] === undefined || obj[key] === "" || obj[key] === " ") {
            delete obj[key];
        }
        // Delete empty object
        // Note : typeof Array is also object
        if (typeof obj[key] === 'object' && Object.keys(obj[key]).length <= 0) {
            delete obj[key];
        }
        // If non empty object call function again
        if(typeof obj[key] === 'object'){
            clean_data(obj[key]);
        }
    }
    return obj;
}

var objData = clean_data(qwerty);
console.log(objData);
var arrayData = clean_data(asdfg);
console.log(arrayData);

Output:

Removes anything that is null, undefined, "", " ", empty object or empty array

jsfiddle here