How to check if a multi-dimensional array only contains empty values?

Question

I looked around and can't quite find the answer for this, so I'm wondering if I contain an array such as this..

$array['foo']['bar'][1] = '';
$array['foo']['bar'][2] = '';
$array['foo']['bar'][3] = '';
$array['foo']['bar'][4] = '';

How can I check if all the values are empty? I tried doing the following:

if (empty($array['foo']['bar'])) {
    // Array empty
}

But as expected that didn't work.

How can I do this?

A more dynamic/recursive solution: (empty strings, nulls, zeros, etc) — mickmackusa
– mickmackusa ♦, Commented Feb 9, 2024 at 4:33

Orangepill · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-06 19:32:21Z

3

If you wanted to check to see if all of the values where populated you can use

 if(call_user_func_array("isset", $array['foo']['bar']))

For what you want to do though you could use array reduce with a closure

 if(array_reduce($array, function(&$res, $a){if ($a) $res = true;}))

Note this will only work in php 5.3+

edited Jul 6, 2013 at 19:32

answered Jul 6, 2013 at 19:22

Orangepill

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1 Comment

Brett Over a year ago

Hmmm looking at the example on the php.net site doesn't it split the array values into separate vars and hence this would pass 4 values to isset and be invalid?

Dave Chen · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-06 19:21:50Z

1

$array['foo']['bar'] isn't empty because it's actually array(1=>'',2=>'',3=>'',4=>'').

You would need to do a foreach loop on it to check if it is indeed all empty.

$arr_empty = true;
foreach ($array['foo']['bar'] as $arr) {
    if (!empty($arr)) {
        $arr_empty = false;
    }
}
//$arr_empty is now true or false based on $array['foo']['bar']

answered Jul 6, 2013 at 19:21

Dave Chen

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Comments

dxc · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-15 00:43:23Z

1

A short alternative would be:

if (empty(implode($array['foo']['bar']))) {
  // is empty
}

Note that some single values may be considered as empty. See empty().

answered Jul 15, 2015 at 0:43

dxc

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