Collections
Introduction
The Illuminate\Support\Collection
class provides a fluent, convenient wrapper for working with arrays of data. For example, check out the following code. We'll use the collect
helper to create a new collection instance from the array, run the strtoupper
function on each element, and then remove all empty elements:
$collection = collect(['taylor', 'abigail', null])->map(function (?string $name) {
return strtoupper($name);
})->reject(function (string $name) {
return empty($name);
});
As you can see, the Collection
class allows you to chain its methods to perform fluent mapping and reducing of the underlying array. In general, collections are immutable, meaning every Collection
method returns an entirely new Collection
instance.
Creating Collections
As mentioned above, the collect
helper returns a new Illuminate\Support\Collection
instance for the given array. So, creating a collection is as simple as:
$collection = collect([1, 2, 3]);
The results of Eloquent queries are always returned as Collection
instances.
Extending Collections
Collections are "macroable", which allows you to add additional methods to the Collection
class at run time. The Illuminate\Support\Collection
class' macro
method accepts a closure that will be executed when your macro is called. The macro closure may access the collection's other methods via $this
, just as if it were a real method of the collection class. For example, the following code adds a toUpper
method to the Collection
class:
use Illuminate\Support\Collection;
use Illuminate\Support\Str;
Collection::macro('toUpper', function () {
return $this->map(function (string $value) {
return Str::upper($value);
});
});
$collection = collect(['first', 'second']);
$upper = $collection->toUpper();
// ['FIRST', 'SECOND']
Typically, you should declare collection macros in the boot
method of a service provider.
Macro Arguments
If necessary, you may define macros that accept additional arguments:
use Illuminate\Support\Collection;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Lang;
Collection::macro('toLocale', function (string $locale) {
return $this->map(function (string $value) use ($locale) {
return Lang::get($value, [], $locale);
});
});
$collection = collect(['first', 'second']);
$translated = $collection->toLocale('es');
Available Methods
For the majority of the remaining collection documentation, we'll discuss each method available on the Collection
class. Remember, all of these methods may be chained to fluently manipulate the underlying array. Furthermore, almost every method returns a new Collection
instance, allowing you to preserve the original copy of the collection when necessary:
after all average avg before chunk chunkWhile collapse collect combine concat contains containsOneItem containsStrict count countBy crossJoin dd diff diffAssoc diffAssocUsing diffKeys doesntContain dot dump duplicates duplicatesStrict each eachSpread ensure every except filter first firstOrFail firstWhere flatMap flatten flip forget forPage get groupBy has hasAny implode intersect intersectAssoc intersectByKeys isEmpty isNotEmpty join keyBy keys last lazy macro make map mapInto mapSpread mapToGroups mapWithKeys max median merge mergeRecursive min mode multiply nth only pad partition percentage pipe pipeInto pipeThrough pluck pop prepend pull push put random range reduce reduceSpread reject replace replaceRecursive reverse search select shift shuffle skip skipUntil skipWhile slice sliding sole some sort sortBy sortByDesc sortDesc sortKeys sortKeysDesc sortKeysUsing splice split splitIn sum take takeUntil takeWhile tap times toArray toJson transform undot union unique uniqueStrict unless unlessEmpty unlessNotEmpty unwrap value values when whenEmpty whenNotEmpty where whereStrict whereBetween whereIn whereInStrict whereInstanceOf whereNotBetween whereNotIn whereNotInStrict whereNotNull whereNull wrap zip