Laravel has a collection class that is a nice wrapper to handle arrays. Laravel Collection class has useful methods that are used to add filters, modify, and make things convenient. Laravel Eloquent uses the collection method to return results. 

Advantages of Selecting Laravel Development:

• Laravel stands apart from the crowd as it uses the new features of PHP. It has some helpful features like Namespaces, Overloading, Interfaces, Anonymous functions, and shorter array syntax.
• Hire a Laravel developer as you need to know about the documentation of different versions of Laravel. The platform is developer-friendly as it has a detailed explanation of coding style, classes, and methods. 
• Web applications must keep interacting with customers. Laravel framework is equipped with clean and there are drivers like SMTP, SparkPost, Mailgun, and more to send mails. 
• Laravel Development has the support of cache backend to configure multiple cache configurations
• When you hire Laravel developers they generally avoid the tedious task of adding repetitive programming tasks as they are time-consuming. Laravel has an Artisan tool that creates skeleton code and handles database systems.
• The Laravel Collection reduces the product development cycle as it has faster integrations and is supported by a huge community of Laracasts. 
• Inversion of Control is the method used to generate new objects and there is no need to bootstrap any external libraries. Laravel allows access to the objects from anywhere in the coding. 
• Reverse routing is used to create links into the named routes. While creating links using the router’s name and it will insert the correct URL into the framework.        

Let us Look at some Awesome Laravel Collection Methods are: 

Filter()

It is a useful Laravel collection method that allows you to add a filter in the collection with a callback. Generally passes the items that return true and the rest of the items are removed. Filter returns another instance without using the original instance. It accepts the key and value as two parameters during a callback.

Search()

This method is used to search a collection of the given value. The key of the value in the collection is returned and if the value is not matched then it returns false. The search is completed using a loose comparison by default. It allows in passing true as the second argument in the search method to use the strict comparison. This collection method also allows passing your callback function to the search method that will return the key of the first item that passes the truth test. 

Chunk()

It is used to split the Laravel collection into multiple smaller and equal parts.  This method will make collection into given sizes using chunk().

Debugging a collection 

Dumping the content of Laravel collection is very essential when it is about debugging the code. Instead of using the dump($collection), the Laravel collection has its dump method which gives a cleaner output. If the developers want to exit from the script after the dumping of the collection they can use the dd (Dump and Die) method on the collection. 

Push and Pull

Appending an item at the end of the collection can be performed using the push method. While adding an item at the beginning of the collection can be done using the prepend method in Laravel Collection. The Pull method is used to return and remove the item from the Collection by using its key. 

Max 

This method is used to get the maximum value from the collection. If the Laravel Collection has arrays then developers can pass a parameter to get the maximum value of a specific key.  

Map()

This method is used to iterate a collection and return value into a callback function that will create a new collection. Developers have the freedom to modify an item and return it in the new callback function.

Contains()

This method is very useful when one needs to check whether the Laravel collection has a value or not. Contain() method is used to check that the parameter exists or not which will return a Boolean value of true and false. Developers can also perform a strict comparison using the containsStrict() method.   

Few Advantages of using the Laravel Collection:

Avoid the braces 

Some of the arrays have more than 10 braces which can be difficult to track, so Laravel collection has replaced it with:

Collect($array1)

      ->merge($array2)

      ->sort()

      ->shuffle()

This makes the code more readable and object-oriented for the developers.  

Usage of API is unified 

Earlier PHP developers faced API issues where they were not consistent about their arrays. Laravel Collection has made the API consistent by making it easier as follows:

Collect($array)

      ->each($callback)

      ->map($callback)

      ->merge($array1)

      ->push($value)

Process the Key-Value Array Better

Laravel focused on processing the data from a database. Many cases have a key-value array situation instead of indexed arrays. The Laravel collection has extended methods that process with the key of the array. 

Deal with the Multi-Layer Array

Most of the original array API deals with the top layer of the array, so if the developer has to process into the deep layer then it might make the c complicated. The Laravel Collection API allows to access the deeper layer of the array. 

What makes Laravel Collection Useful? 

• Laravel Development is simplified for the developers using the “Collection” of items
• Objects, Primitive, Arrays, or their collection everything are handled using Laravel Collection 
• There are custom functions like a macro function that are used to extend Laravel Collections
• Laravel Collection has components that are encapsulated and modularized. 

Wrapping It Up!

We have tried covering up some of the best Laravel Collection methods that are very useful for the development process. There are still many more methods that can be seen in the detailed Laravel or its API documentation. We agree that it can be a tricky task to handle Laravel Development but you can easily solve this issue if you hire a Laravel Developer that has the right experience and knowledge about Laravel Collections.

Tarun Bansal

December 30, 2020