Laravel: Convert Eloquent collection to Array without converting elements

Question

Is there a (simple) way to convert an Eloquent Collection to an actual array without converting the elements themselves?

I get in trouble when I try to pass the collection into a php method like array_rand($collection). This gives me the error: array_rand() expects parameter 1 to be array, object given.

I worked around this by using $collection->shuffle()->first(); which works fine and of course I could loop over the collection and push all in an array, but just out of curiosity I wonder if I'm overlooking something.

Update / Conclusion

There seems to be a difference between the all method on a Illuminate\Support\Collection and a Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection. The all on an Eloquent Collection returns a Support Collection and the Support Collection returns an Array.

So to get an Array of Eloquent models you need to use SomeModel::all()->all();

Answer 1

My first thought was $collection->toArray() but that also converts the Eloquent models to arrays. But the docs say that $collection->all() should avoid that.

toArray also converts all of the collection's nested objects to an array. If you want to get the raw underlying array, use the all method instead.