7 Laravel Collection Methods You Might Not Know

In Laravel, instances of Collections are used absolutely everywhere. There are lots of methods you can use on them. In the beginning, I just used the most well-known methods like map, filter, reduce and first. But there are many more, and some of them are useful shortcuts to reduce boilerplate.

Here are my top 7 methods I use all the time, but did not know when I started with Laravel.

1 keyBy

The keyBy method adds keys to a Collection. You can specify the key by its name or with a callback:

$c = collect([
    ['id' => 'ID-1', 'name' => 'Alice', 'age' => 34],
    ['id' => 'ID-2', 'name' => 'Kevin', 'age' => 39],
]);

$c->keyBy('id');
/*
    collect([
        'ID-1' => ['id' => 'ID-1', 'name' => 'Alice', 'age' => 34],
        'ID-2' => ['id' => 'ID-2', 'name' => 'Kevin', 'age' => 39],
    ])
*/

It's a neat shortcut for mapWithKeys where the value is unchanged.

2 reject

reject is the inverse of the well-known filter method. It can be called with a value or a callback:

$c = collect(['Alice', 'Bob', null, 'Ben', 'Carla']);

$c = $c->reject(null);
// collect(['Alice', 'Bob', 'Ben', 'Carla']);

$c->reject(fn(string $name): bool => str_starts_with($name, 'B'));
// collect(['Alice', 'Carla']);

I use reject to replace instances of filter where the condition is negated because it makes the code more readable.

3 pluck

The pluck method allows you to retrieve nested values of a Collection. If you pass a second argument to pluck, it will use it to add keys:

$employees = collect([
    ['name' => 'Alice', 'position' => 'Manager',    'age' => 45],
    ['name' => 'Bob',   'position' => 'Programmer', 'age' => 39],
    ['name' => 'Carl',  'position' => 'Manager',    'age' => 51],
    ['name' => 'Darcy', 'position' => 'Programmer', 'age' => 28],
]);

$employees->pluck('name');
// collect(['Alice', 'Bob', 'Carl', 'Darcy'])

$employees->pluck('age', 'name');
// collect(['Alice' => 45, 'Bob' => 39, 'Carl' => 51, 'Darcy' => 28])

It's a shortcut for map or mapWithKeys where you just want to get some values.

4 contains

The contains method reports whether the given value is present in the Collection. But what I did not know was, that you can also pass a key, to check for a nested value:

$employees = collect([
    ['name' => 'Alice', 'position' => 'Manager',    'age' => 45],
    ['name' => 'Bob',   'position' => 'Programmer', 'age' => 39],
    ['name' => 'Carl',  'position' => 'Manager',    'age' => 51],
    ['name' => 'Darcy', 'position' => 'Programmer', 'age' => 28],
]);

$employees->contains('name', 'Jack');
// false

$employees->contains('name', 'Bob');
// true

This can replace combinations like ->pluck('name')->contains('Jack'), where you first retrieve values to then call contains on them.

5 firstWhere

firstWhere is a classic shortcut which returns the first value which matches a certain condition. The condition can be a value, callback or key with operator and operand:

$employees = collect([
    ['name' => 'Alice', 'position' => 'Manager',    'age' => 45],
    ['name' => 'Bob',   'position' => 'Programmer', 'age' => 39],
    ['name' => 'Carl',  'position' => 'Manager',    'age' => 51],
    ['name' => 'Darcy', 'position' => 'Programmer', 'age' => 28],
]);

$employees->firstWhere('age', '>' 50);
// ['name' => 'Carl', 'position' => 'Manager', 'age' => 51]

This is a shortcut for a combination of chained calls to where and first.

6 flatMap

The flatMap method combines the map and the flatten methods. The callback given to flatMap can modify each element. Then, all the values are flattened into a new collection.

$employees = collect([
    ['name' => 'Alice', 'position' => 'Manager',    'age' => 45],
    ['name' => 'Bob',   'position' => 'Programmer', 'age' => 39],
    ['name' => 'Carl',  'position' => 'Manager',    'age' => 51],
    ['name' => 'Darcy', 'position' => 'Programmer', 'age' => 28],
]);

$employees->flatMap(
    fn($e) => strtoupper($e['name'])
);
// collect(['ALICE', 'BOB', 'CARL', 'DARCY'])

This is a shortcut for a combination of chained calls to flatten and map.

7 partition

partition allows to separate the values in a Collection into two Collections, based on a callback:

$employees = collect([
    ['name' => 'Alice', 'position' => 'Manager',    'age' => 45],
    ['name' => 'Bob',   'position' => 'Programmer', 'age' => 39],
    ['name' => 'Carl',  'position' => 'Manager',    'age' => 51],
    ['name' => 'Darcy', 'position' => 'Programmer', 'age' => 28],
]);

[$m, $p] = $employees->partition(
    fn($e) => $e['position'] === 'Manager'
);

$m;
/*
    collect([
        ['name' => 'Alice', 'position' => 'Manager', 'age' => 45],
        ['name' => 'Carl',  'position' => 'Manager', 'age' => 51],
    ])
*/

$p;
/*
    collect([
        ['name' => 'Bob',   'position' => 'Programmer', 'age' => 39],
        ['name' => 'Darcy', 'position' => 'Programmer', 'age' => 28],
    ])
*/

This can replace more complex for loops or multiple filter calls.

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👉 See the Laravel Documentation for the complete reference.

👉 Which Collection methods are you using?

👉 Do you think Laravel has too many Collection methods and shortcuts?

Comments

[Robin Bastiaan]

Very nice collections methods a good Laravel programmer must be aware off. This is where collections shine over the use of plain arrays. Although when possible I like to filter and transform as much as possible in the Eloquent query itself of maximum performance.

One little suggestions on the 7th method: Partition. I would always use longer and self-describing variable names like $managers and $programmers in this example.

Thanks for the article!

[David]

Thanks a lot for your feedback!

Although when possible I like to filter and transform as much as possible in the Eloquent query itself of maximum performance.

That's certainly a valuable tip. 👍

I would always use longer and self-describing variable names like $managers and $programmers in this example.

Definitively true. I just wanted to keep it short for better readability on smaller screens.