How to Clear an Object in JavaScript

Clear an Object in JavaScript #

Use a for..in loop to clear an object and delete all its properties. The loop will iterate over all the enumerable properties in the object.

On each iteration, use the delete operator to delete the current property.

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const obj = {a: 'one', b: 'two'};

for (const key in obj) {
  delete obj[key];
}

console.log(obj); // 👉️ {}

The for...in loop iterates over all of an object's enumerable properties.

Properties assigned to the object using the Object.definedProperty() method are non-enumerable by default and are not iterated over in a for...in loop.

The Object.defineProperty method is mostly used by 3rd party library creators and not in day-to-day code, so chances are the for...in loop covers all of your object's properties.

However, it is more performant to reassign the variable that stores the object.

Clear an Object by reassigning its variable in JavaScript #

To clear an object in Javascript:

1. Declare the variable that stores the object using the let keyword.
2. Reassign the variable to an empty object.

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let obj = {a: 'one', b: 'two'};

obj = {};

console.log(obj); // 👉️ {}

It is much more performant to reassign the variable that stores the object, setting it to an empty object.

This is only possible if you used the let or var keywords to declare the object.

Notice that we used the let keyword when declaring the obj variable.

In the extremely unlikely scenario that your object contains non-enumerable properties, you can use the following approach to clear an object.

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let obj = {a: 'one', b: 'two'};

Object.defineProperty(obj, 'color', {
  value: 'red',
  enumerable: false, // 👈️ defaults to false
  configurable: true,
});

const allProperties = Object.getOwnPropertyNames(obj);
console.log(allProperties); // 👉️ ['a', 'b', 'color']

allProperties.forEach(property => {
  delete obj[property];
});

console.log(Object.getOwnPropertyNames(obj)); // []

We used the Object.getOwnPropertyNames() method to get an array of the enumerable and non-enumerable properties of the object.

We used the Array.forEach() method to iterate over the array and cleared each property using the delete operator.

Another simple way to clear an object is to use the Object.keys() and Array.forEach() methods.

Clear an Object using Object.keys() #

To clear an object in JavaScript:

1. Use the Object.keys() method to get an array of the object's keys.
2. Use the Array.forEach() method to iterate over the array of keys.
3. Use the delete operator to delete each key from the object.

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const obj = {a: 'one', b: 'two', c: 'three'};

Object.keys(obj).forEach(key => {
  delete obj[key];
});

console.log(obj); // 👉️ {}

The Object.keys() method returns an array of the object's keys.

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const obj = {a: 'one', b: 'two', c: 'three'};

// 👇️ [ 'a', 'b', 'c' ]
console.log(Object.keys(obj));

The function we passed to the Array.forEach() method gets called with each element of the array.

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const obj = {a: 'one', b: 'two', c: 'three'};

Object.keys(obj).forEach(key => {
  delete obj[key];
});

console.log(obj); // 👉️ {}

On each iteration, we use the delete statement to delete the current key.

After the last iteration, the object is empty.