Laravel 4 - Get Array of Attributes from Collection

Question

I have a collection of objects. Let's say the objects are tags:

$tags = Tag::all(); 

I want to retrieve a certain attribute for each tag, say its name. Of course I can do

foreach ($tags as $tag) {     $tag_names[] = $tag->name; } 

But is there a more laravelish solution to this problem?

Something like $tags->name?

Answer 1

Collections have a lists method similar to the method for tables described by @Gadoma. It returns an array containing the value of a given attribute for each item in the collection.

To retrieve the desired array of names from my collection of tags I can simply use:

$tags->lists('name'); 

Update: As of laravel 5.2 lists is replaced by pluck.

$tags->pluck('name'); 

More specifically, the laravel 5.2 upgrade guide states that "[t]he lists method on the Collection, query builder and Eloquent query builder objects has been renamed to pluck. The method signature remains the same."