Check if JavaScript input is empty

Question

Having a general utility function to see if the input is empty makes sense to me. Empty means different things depends on the type. I just spent ~5 minutes writing this one up, so I'm sure it's missing edge cases, and maybe I'm approaching the whole problem incorrectly.

Function

function isEmpty(input: any) {
 switch (typeof input) {
 case 'string':
 return input.length === 0;
 case 'object':
 return (input instanceof Array)? input.length === 0: Object.getOwnPropertyNames(input).length === 0;
 case 'number':
 default:
 return input === undefined;
 }
}

Basic [SONA!] testing

let s = '';
let o = {};
let n: number;
let a = [];
console.log('isEmpty(s): ' + isEmpty(s));
console.log('isEmpty(o): ' + isEmpty(o));
console.log('isEmpty(n): ' + isEmpty(n));
console.log('isEmpty(a): ' + isEmpty(a));

I'm tempted to modify the object line to check if the length property is defined, rather than restricting to Arrays, but that's all I can think of offhand. Any other ideas on making this more general?

Answer 1

One edge case you're missing is how to handle null. isEmpty(null) will fail because Object.getOwnPropertyNames(null) will throw TypeError: can't convert null to object.

Also be aware that isEmpty(NaN) will return false, which may or may not be what you want.

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