Question

I have an object with several properties. I would like to remove any properties that have falsy values.

This can be achieved with compact on arrays, but what about objects?

Answer 1

You could make your own underscore plugin (mixin) :

_.mixin({
  compactObject: function(o) {
    _.each(o, function(v, k) {
      if(!v) {
        delete o[k];
      }
    });
    return o;
  }
});

And then use it as a native underscore method :

var o = _.compactObject({
  foo: 'bar',
  a: 0,
  b: false,
  c: '',
  d: null,
  e: undefined
});

Update

As @AndreiNeculau pointed out, this mixin affects the original object, while the original compact underscore method returns a copy of the array.
To solve this issue and make our compactObject behave more like it’s cousin, here’s a minor update:

_.mixin({
  compactObject : function(o) {
     var clone = _.clone(o);
     _.each(clone, function(v, k) {
       if(!v) {
         delete clone[k];
       }
     });
     return clone;
  }
});