How to merge Laravel objects in controller

Question

I have a controller where I want to combine data from multiple tables with parallel structures. What I want to end up with in the end is one object I can return from the controller so I can parse it in Backbone.

I want to do something like this:

public function index() {     $mc = MainContact::where('verified', '=', '1')->get();     $sm = SendMessage::where('verified', '=', '1')->get();      $obj = (object) array_merge((array) $mc, (array) $sm);     return $obj; } 

I'm told by another post on StackOverflow that this works in PHP 5.3+. However, this returns the following error in Laravel:

UnexpectedValueException: The Response content must be a string or object implementing  __toString(), "object" given. 

How do I implement this method in Laravel? Both $mc and sm return valid objects in Laravel.

Answer 1

Nowadays you can use

$new_collection = $collection->merge($other_collection).

This works in Laravel 4 and seems to handle both arrays and collections.