Question

I am returning a json_encode() of an array of objects pulled from an ORM. It includes lots of properties with a null value. What is the neatest way to remove these properties that are null? I guess I could iterate over the properties, look if they are null and then unset() that property, but surely there must be a more elegant way?

Answer 1

Try this; it will only work on a simple object, but if it’s coming from an ORM it should be simple enough.

// Strips any false-y values
$object = (object) array_filter((array) $object);

Thanks to Gordon’s answer to another question yesterday for giving me the idea.

This works by

• converting the object to an associative array, where object properties are the keys and their values are the array values
• using array_filter with default arguments to remove array entries with a false (e.g. empty, or null) values
• converting the new array back to a simple object

Note that this will remove all properties with empty values, including empty strings, false boolean values and 0s, not just nulls; you can change the array_filter call if you want to keep those and only remote those that are exactly null.

// Strips only null values
$object = (object) array_filter((array) $object, function ($val) {
    return !is_null($val);
});