RESTful API - Array to Collection Laravel 5

Question

I'm having issues with an array returned from DB::select(). I'm heavily using skip and take on Collections of eloquent models in my API. Unfortunately, DB::select returns an array, which obviously doesn't work with skip and take's. How would one convert arrays to a collection that can utilise these methods?

I've tried

\Illuminate\Support\Collection::make(DB::select(...));

Which doesn't quite work as I expected, as it wraps the entire array in a Collection, not the individual results.

Is it possible to convert the return from a DB::select to a 'proper' Collection that can use skip and take methods?

Update

I've also tried:

$query = \Illuminate\Support\Collection::make(DB::table('survey_responses')->join('people', 'people.id',
        '=', 'survey_responses.recipient_id')->select('survey_responses.id', 'survey_responses.response',
        'survey_responses.score', 'people.name', 'people.email')->get());

Which still tells me:

FatalErrorException in QueryHelper.php line 36:
Call to a member function skip() on array

Cheers

Answer 1

I would try:

$queryResult = DB::table('...')->get();

$collection = collect($queryResult);

If the query result is an array, the collection is filled up with your results. See the official documentation for the collection. Laravel5 Collections

Answer 2

For anyone else that's having this sort of problem in Laravel, I figured out a work around with the following solution:

        $query = DB::table('survey_responses')->join('people', 'people.id', '=', 'survey_responses.recipient_id')
            ->select('survey_responses.id', 'survey_responses.response', 'survey_responses.score', 'people.name', 'people.email');
            if(isset($tags)){
                foreach($tags as $tag){
                    $query->orWhere('survey_responses.response', 'like', '%'.$tag.'%');
                }
            };

        // We apply the pagination headers on the complete result set - before any limiting
        $headers = \HeaderHelper::generatePaginationHeader($page, $query, 'response', $limit, $tags);
        // Now limit and create 'pages' based on passed params
        $query->offset(
            (isset($page) ? $page - 1 * (isset($limit) ? $limit : env('RESULTS_PER_PAGE', 30)) : 1)
        )
        ->take(
            (isset($limit) ? $limit : env('RESULTS_PER_PAGE', 30))
        );

Basically, I wasn't aware that you could run the queries almost incrementally, which enabled me to generate pagination chunks before limiting the data returned.