Remove properties from objects (JavaScript)

Solution 1:

To remove a property from an object (mutating the object), you can do it like this:

delete myObject.regex;
// or,
delete myObject['regex'];
// or,
var prop = "regex";
delete myObject[prop];

Demo

var myObject = {
    "ircEvent": "PRIVMSG",
    "method": "newURI",
    "regex": "^http://.*"
};
delete myObject.regex;

console.log(myObject);

For anyone interested in reading more about it, Stack Overflow user kangax has written an incredibly in-depth blog post about the delete statement on their blog, Understanding delete. It is highly recommended.

If you'd like a new object with all the keys of the original except some, you could use destructuring.

Demo

let myObject = {
  "ircEvent": "PRIVMSG",
  "method": "newURI",
  "regex": "^http://.*"
};

const {regex, ...newObj} = myObject;

console.log(newObj);   // has no 'regex' key
console.log(myObject); // remains unchanged

Solution 2:

Objects in JavaScript can be thought of as maps between keys and values. The delete operator is used to remove these keys, more commonly known as object properties, one at a time.

var obj = {
  myProperty: 1    
}
console.log(obj.hasOwnProperty('myProperty')) // true
delete obj.myProperty
console.log(obj.hasOwnProperty('myProperty')) // false

The delete operator does not directly free memory, and it differs from simply assigning the value of null or undefined to a property, in that the property itself is removed from the object. Note that if the value of a deleted property was a reference type (an object), and another part of your program still holds a reference to that object, then that object will, of course, not be garbage collected until all references to it have disappeared.

delete will only work on properties whose descriptor marks them as configurable.

Solution 3:

var myObject = {"ircEvent": "PRIVMSG", "method": "newURI", "regex": "^http://.*"};
    
delete myObject.regex;

console.log ( myObject.regex); // logs: undefined

This works in Firefox and Internet Explorer, and I think it works in all others.

Solution 4:

Old question, modern answer. Using object destructuring, an ECMAScript 6 feature, it's as simple as:

const { a, ...rest } = { a: 1, b: 2, c: 3 };

Or with the questions sample:

const myObject = {"ircEvent": "PRIVMSG", "method": "newURI", "regex": "^http://.*"};
const { regex, ...newObject } = myObject;
console.log(newObject);

You can see it in action in the Babel try-out editor.

Edit:

To reassign to the same variable, use a let:

let myObject = {"ircEvent": "PRIVMSG", "method": "newURI", "regex": "^http://.*"};
({ regex, ...myObject } = myObject);
console.log(myObject);