Remove empty arrays from nested array

remove-empty-array-values.php

<?php

$array1 = $array2 = array (
	0 => 
	array (
		'id' => '',
		'name' => '',
		'description' => null,
		'categories' => false,
		'posts' => '',
	),
	1 => array(
		'asd' => '',
		'foo' => [
			'bar' => [
				'baz' => ''
			]
		]
	)
);

$array2[0]['id'] = 5;

function remove_empty_values($array){
	if(is_array($array)) {
		$json_encoded_arr = json_encode($array, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);
	} else {
		$json_encoded_arr = $array;
	}
	
	$re = '/\,?"[^"]*":""/m';
	$json_encoded_arr = str_replace('{}', '""', $json_encoded_arr);
	if(preg_match($re, $json_encoded_arr)){
		$json_encoded_arr = preg_replace($re, '', $json_encoded_arr);
		return remove_empty_values($json_encoded_arr);
	}
	
	
	return array_filter(array_map(function ($val){ return array_filter((array) $val); }, (array)json_decode($json_encoded_arr, true)));
}


$array_clean1 = remove_empty_values( $array1 );
$array_clean2 = remove_empty_values( $array2 );

echo '<pre>';

var_export( $array_clean1 );

echo '</pre>';

echo '<pre>';

var_export( $array_clean2 );

echo '</pre>';


/** Outputs

array (
)
array (
  0 => 
  array (
    'id' => 5,
  ),
)

*/