How to remove a property from a JavaScript object

There are two ways to remove a property from a JavaScript object: one is the mutable way of doing it by using the delete operator. And the second one is the immutable way of doing it by using object restructuring. Let us go through each of these:

1. The delete operator

delete is a JavaScript instruction that allows us to remove a property from a JavaScript object. There are a couple of ways to use it:

  • delete object.property;
  • delete object[‘property’];
- Advertisement -

The operator deletes the corresponding property from the object.

let blog = {name: 'Wisdom Geek', author: 'Saransh Kataria'};
const propToBeDeleted = 'author';
delete blog[propToBeDeleted];
console.log(blog); // {name: 'Wisdom Geek'}

The delete operation modifies the original object. Therefore it is a mutable operation.

2. Object destructuring

Using the object restructuring and rest syntax, we can destructure the object with the property to be removed and create a new copy of it. After the destructuring, a new copy of the object would be created and assigned to a new variable without the property that we chose to remove.

const { property, ...remainingObject } = object;

For example:

let blog = {name: 'Wisdom Geek', author: 'Saransh Kataria'};
const { author, ...blogRest } = blog;
console.log(blogRest) // {name: 'Wisdom Geek'};
console.log(blog); // {name: 'Wisdom Geek', author: 'Saransh Kataria'}

If we want to do this dynamically, we can do:

const name = 'propertyToBeRemoved';
const { [name]: removedProperty, ...remainingObject } = object;

For example:

let blog = {name: 'Wisdom Geek', author: 'Saransh Kataria'};
const name = 'author';
const { [name]: removedProperty, ...remainingObject } = blog;
console.log(removedProperty); // Saransh Kataria
console.log(remainingObject); // {name: 'Wisdom Geek'}

It is also possible to remove multiple properties using the same syntax.

And those are the 2 ways to remove a property from a JavaScript object. If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment below!

Recent Articles

How to sort a Set in JavaScript

ES6 introduced the set data structure in JavaScript. But sets are not ordered abstract data structures. So there is no .sort() property...

Debugging CSS scroll using one simple style

I have been doing a lot of complicated front-end work off lately and that always brings me back to the class conundrum...

CSS :has a parent selector now

CSS now includes a :has selector that allows us to apply styles on the basis of what is happening inside an element....

How to fix “invalid active developer path” after MacOS update

If you are here, then you are getting an "invalid active developer path" error on running commands in the terminal after a...

Getting the value of an input element as a number without parseInt

Every once in a while, you come across something and you think, how did I not know this earlier? valueAsNumber is that thing...

Related Stories

Leave A Reply

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Hi there! Want some more knowledge?

Think that the knowledge shared is helpful? You might want to give our mailing list a try. We'll send you 2-4 emails a month, right when new posts come out.

Hi there! Want some more knowledge?

Think that the knowledge shared is helpful? You might want to give our mailing list a try. We'll send you 2-4 emails a month, right when new posts come out.