Complex Laravel collection

Question

I'm having some issues with the Laravel Collection class.

What I'm trying to do:

• I have a multisite solution in which a site has "facilitators". Sometimes one facilitator appears on multiple sites, and not just one.
• I want to list all the facilitators and the website they're on the main page, but I don't want multiple users.

So what I currently do is:

• Get the Facilitators.
• Use Collection to collect the facilitators and use unique('name').

This gives me unique facilitators, but only picks the first one it detects and then deletes the other ones.

So lets say I have this collection:

Collection { 
  #items: array:3 [
    0 => array:2 [
      "name" => "John"
      "site" => "Example"
    ]
    1 => array:2 [
      "name" => "Martin"
      "site" => "Another"
    ]
    2 => array:2 [
      "name" => "John"
      "site" => "Another"
    ]
  ]
}

With unique() I would get:

Collection { 
  #items: array:3 [
    0 => array:2 [
      "name" => "John"
      "site" => "Example"
    ]
    1 => array:2 [
      "name" => "Martin"
      "site" => "Another"
    ]
  ]
}

And this is what I want to get:

Collection { 
  #items: array:3 [
    0 => array:2 [
      "name" => "John"
      "site" => ["Example", "Another"]
    ]
    1 => array:2 [
      "name" => "Martin"
      "site" => "Another"
    ]
  ]
}

Does anyone have an idea how I could accomplish this with Laravel's collection class?

Answer 1

When stuck with collections always remember reduce is a powerful tool in your arsenal.

Building on Sam's answer which I couldn't get to work, I think using reduce alongside groupBy should work...

$sites = collect([
  ["name" => "John", "site" => "Example"],
  ["name" => "Martin", "site" => "Another"],
  ["name" => "John", "site" => "Another"],
]);

$sites->groupBy('name')->reduce(function ($result, $item) {
  $result[] = [
    'name' => $item->first()['name'], 
    'sites' => $item->pluck('site')->toArray()
  ];

  return $result;
}, collect([]))->toArray();

And from the console...

λ php artisan tinker                                                                             
Psy Shell v0.8.2 (PHP 7.0.10 ÔÇö cli) by Justin Hileman                                          
>>> $sites = collect([                                                                           
...   ["name" => "John", "site" => "Example"],                                                   
...   ["name" => "Martin", "site" => "Another"],                                                 
...   ["name" => "John", "site" => "Another"],                                                   
... ]);                                                                                          
=> Illuminate\Support\Collection {#698                                                           
     all: [                                                                                      
       [                                                                                         
         "name" => "John",                                                                       
         "site" => "Example",                                                                    
       ],                                                                                        
       [                                                                                         
         "name" => "Martin",                                                                     
         "site" => "Another",                                                                    
       ],                                                                                        
       [                                                                                         
         "name" => "John",                                                                       
         "site" => "Another",                                                                    
       ],                                                                                        
     ],                                                                                          
   }                                                                                             
>>> $sites->groupBy('name')->reduce(function ($result, $item) {                                  
...   $result[] = ['name' => $item->first()['name'], 'sites' => $item->pluck('site')->toArray()];
...                                                                                              
...   return $result;                                                                            
... }, collect([]))->toArray();                                                                  
=> [                                                                                             
     [                                                                                           
       "name" => "John",                                                                         
       "sites" => [                                                                              
         "Example",                                                                              
         "Another",                                                                              
       ],                                                                                        
     ],                                                                                          
     [                                                                                           
       "name" => "Martin",                                                                       
       "sites" => [                                                                              
         "Another",                                                                              
       ],                                                                                        
     ],                                                                                          
   ]                                                                                             

One thing to note is that you specified in your question that the sites should return a single string if there's only one site and an array if there's many.The above solution does not provide this! I think this is inconsistent and you should always return an array for the sites key, even if it only has one value as it will make it more difficult to read and manipulate later on.

However, if this is something important, you could instead check if there are many sites when using pluck to set an array and if not you could set it as a single string, like this:

$sites->groupBy('name')->reduce(function ($result, $item) {
  $result[] = [
    'name' => $item->first()['name'],
    'sites' => $item->pluck('site')->count() > 1 ? $item->pluck('site') : $item->first()['site']
  ];

  return $result;
}, collect([]))->toArray();

which would produce...

[                        
  [                      
    "name" => "John",    
    "sites" => [         
      "Example",         
      "Another",         
    ],                   
  ],                     
  [                      
    "name" => "Martin",  
    "sites" => "Another",
  ],                     
]