How to check if a JavaScript object is empty.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to check if a JavaScript object is empty or not.

We will also provide you with a custom JavaScript function that you can use in your projects.

Take a look at the following function:

/**
 * A custom function that checks whether a JavaScript object
 * is empty or not,.
 * @param {type} obj
 * @returns {Boolean} TRUE if the object is empty. FALSE if it isn't.
 */
function isEmptyObject(obj){
    //Loop through and check if a property
    //exists
    for(var property in obj){
        if(obj.hasOwnProperty(property)){
            //Property exists, object is not empty,
            //so return FALSE.
            return false;
        }
    }
    //No properties were found, so return TRUE
    return true;
}

The JavaScript function above takes in an object as a parameter before checking to see whether it is empty or not.

If the object is empty, this function will return a boolean TRUE value. If the object is not empty, then it will return a FALSE value.

Basically, this function loops through the object while checking to see if a property exists.

If an object property is found, then it returns a TRUE value. This return statement also halts any further iterations of the for loop.

You can test this function by using the following code snippet:

//Create an empty JavaScript object.
var emptyObject = {};

//Create an object that isn't empty.
var notEmptyObject = {
    name: 'Test'
};

//Testing our function out.
console.log(isEmptyObject(emptyObject)); //returns true
console.log(isEmptyObject(notEmptyObject)); //returns false

Here, we created two JavaScript objects.

The first object is empty, and the second one is not empty. If you pass them into our custom JavaScript function, you will see that it returns TRUE for the first one and FALSE for the second one.

Using Object.keys()

A few tutorials recommend using the Object.keys() method, which became available in ECMA 5+:

//Check to see if Object.keys() returns an
//empty array
if(Object.keys(emptyObject).length === 0){
    console.log('Object is empty!');
}

The code above assumes that if Object.keys() returns an empty array, then the object in question is empty.

The problem with this method is that it isn’t supported by older browsers such as Internet Explorer 8.

This method is also “O(n) time complexity”, which essentially means that it will become slower and slower with larger objects.

The reason for this is that Object.keys() has to return an array of the object’s keys before the length can be checked, whereas the method used in the first example will break out of the loop as soon as a key is discovered.

Using jQuery to check if an object is empty.

The jQuery library comes equipped with its own method, which is called jQuery.isEmptyObject().

This method will return TRUE if the object in question is empty.

if(jQuery.isEmptyObject(emptyObject)){
    console.log('Object is empty!');
}

If you run the code above, you will see that it detects our empty object.