Question

All my AJAX requests are in json format which are being parsed in javascript.

How can i prevent null values being displayed in an HTML page without needing to write an if-statement in javascript for each json value?

Or should i write a custom PHP function to encode an array to json instead of using json_encode() so it doesn’t display ‘null’ ?

Answer 1

In server side with PHP,

You can use array_filter before json_encode.

array_filter without second argument removes null elements of entry array, example :

$object= array(
             0 => 'foo',
             1 => false,
             2 => -1,
             3 => null,
             4 => ''
          );

$object = (object) array_filter((array) $object);
$result = json_encode($object);

The $result contains:

{"0":"foo","2":-1}

As you see, the null elements are removed.