PHP – How to remove empty entries of an array recursively?

I need to remove empty entries on multilevel arrays. For now I can remove entries with empty sub-arrays, but not empty arrays… confused, so do I… I think the code will help to explain better…

<?php

/**
 * 
 * This function remove empty entries on arrays
 * @param array $array
 */
function removeEmptysFromArray($array) {

    $filtered = array_filter($array, 'removeEmptyItems');
    return $filtered;
}

/**
 * 
 * This is a Callback function to use in array_filter()
 * @param array $item
 */
function removeEmptyItems($item) {

    if (is_array($item)) {
        return array_filter($item, 'removeEmptyItems');
    }

    if (!empty($item)) {
        return true;  
    }
}


$raw = array(
    'firstname' => 'Foo',
    'lastname'  => 'Bar',
    'nickname' => '',
    'birthdate' => array( 
        'day'   => '',
        'month' => '',
        'year'  => '',
    ),
    'likes' => array(
        'cars'  => array('Subaru Impreza WRX STi', 'Mitsubishi Evo', 'Nissan GTR'),
        'bikes' => array(),
    ),
);

print_r(removeEmptysFromArray($raw));

?>

Ok, this code will remove “nickname”, “birthdate” but is not removing “bikes” that have an empty array.

My question is… How to remove the “bikes” entry?

Best Regards,

Sorry for my english…

Answer

Try this code:

<?php
function array_remove_empty($haystack)
{
    foreach ($haystack as $key => $value) {
        if (is_array($value)) {
            $haystack[$key] = array_remove_empty($haystack[$key]);
        }

        if (empty($haystack[$key])) {
            unset($haystack[$key]);
        }
    }

    return $haystack;
}

$raw = array(
    'firstname' => 'Foo',
    'lastname'  => 'Bar',
    'nickname' => '',
    'birthdate' => array(
        'day'   => '',
        'month' => '',
        'year'  => '',
    ),
    'likes' => array(
        'cars'  => array('Subaru Impreza WRX STi', 'Mitsubishi Evo', 'Nissan GTR'),
        'bikes' => array(),
    ),
);

print_r(array_remove_empty($raw));