PHP: How to remove empty values from an array

Posted on May 21, 2008, Filled under PHP, Bookmark it

This function removes empty values from an array. This is useful if you’re working with dynamical arrays (for instance data harvested from a web site).

<?php
/*
Credits: Bit Repository
URL: http://www.bitrepository.com/web-programming/php/remove-empty-values-from-an-array.html
*/
function remove_array_empty_values($array, $remove_null_number = true)
{
	$new_array = array();

	$null_exceptions = array();

	foreach ($array as $key => $value)
	{
		$value = trim($value);

        if($remove_null_number)
		{
	        $null_exceptions[] = '0';
		}

        if(!in_array($value, $null_exceptions) && $value != "")
		{
            $new_array[] = $value;
        }
    }
    return $new_array;
}
?>

Example of usage:

$array = array("white", "yellow", 0, "green", " ", "navy");

$remove_null_number = true;
$new_array = remove_array_empty_values($array, $remove_null_number);

echo '<pre>'; print_r($new_array); echo '</pre>';

The new array will look like this:

Array
(
    [0] => white
    [1] => yellow
    [2] => green
    [3] => navy
)

NOTE: If you wish to keep the null number (0) then set the variable $remove_null_number to false.

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May 21, 2008
article by Gabriel C.
7 comments

Tags: array, remove

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7 Replies to "PHP: How to remove empty values from an array"

satheesh
September 25, 2008 at 3:37 PM
Reply
This is very very help for me to do dynamic checkbox with multiple textbox fields. To insert in DB.
Thanks,
Satheesh kumar.M
mohamed
December 9, 2008 at 11:26 PM
Reply
Hi, nice script!
but instead of this long function try using the following code :
function filter_string($str){
if($str == "" || $str == 0){
return false;
}else{
return true;
}
}
$array = array("white", "yellow", 0, "green", " ", "navy");
$filtered = array_filter($array,’filter_string’);
echo ‘<pre>’; print_r($filtered ); echo ‘</pre>’;
Seth
January 26, 2009 at 4:48 PM
Reply
To make it even easier, PHP's built-in array_filter() function automatically strips any array values that equate to FALSE (which empty strings do). Thus, all you really need is:
array_filter($array);
Gabriel
January 29, 2009 at 8:09 AM
Reply
Seth, I know about array_filter(). However, my function can keep the '0' values (if specified) and also removes the unnecessary whitespace from the string by using trim().
Davide
July 18, 2009 at 8:14 AM
Reply
Nice solution, it’s good to have a function doing that, in particular if you would like to do something on array elements rather than simply removing empty elements!
To simple remove empty elements there’s a really quick solution, only one line of code:
$SweepedArray = array_values(array_filter($InitialArray));
Check out the full story here:
http://www.xomba.com/php_how_delete_empty_values_array_single_line_code
Waseem
December 10, 2009 at 2:43 AM
Reply
Thanks for the code, it really helped
AlexPolo
June 26, 2010 at 11:55 PM
Reply
IMHO, this is much better:
$new_array = array_diff(array(“white”, “yellow”, 0, “green”, ” “, “navy”), array(‘ ‘, 0));
print_r($new_array);// Array ( [0] => white [1] => yellow [3] => green [5] => navy )
In case if the index matters, the following extra step could be performed:
$new_array = array_merge($new_array, array());
print_r($new_array); // Array ( [0] => white [1] => yellow [2] => green [3] => navy )