DEV Community

Morcos Gad
Morcos Gad

Posted on

 

The Splat Operator In PHP And Use It With map() - Laravel

Today we will talk about the Splat Operator, and it gives you the possibility to add any number of parameters inside the function without committing to a certain number, and although it was not used in many cases, but I found it important to share it.
The PHP splat operator (...) has been available in PHP since version 5.6. When it was introduced I made note of it but have never really used it, so I thought it might be interesting to explore it a little.
Take the following function, this takes two parameters and adds them together, returning the output

function addNumbers($number1, $number2) {
  return $number1 + $number2;
}
$numbersArray = [1, 2];
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

We can call the function using the splat operator like this

echo addNumbers(...$numbersArray);
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

The following function will take different amounts of numbers and add them together

function addNumbers(...$numbers) {
  $sum = 0;
  foreach ($numbers as $number) {
    $sum += $number;
  }
  return $sum;
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

This is called in the following way

echo addNumbers(1, 2, 3, 4, 5);
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

since PHP 7.4 it is also possible to run a kind of array merge operation using the splat operator. The following example creates an array and then merges it into the start of a second array

$numbers1 = [1, 2, 3];
$numbers2 = [...$numbers1, 4, 5, 6];
print_r($numbers2);
/*
Array
(
    [0] => 1
    [1] => 2
    [2] => 3
    [3] => 4
    [4] => 5
    [5] => 6
)
*/
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Now let's talk about Collection Map Method
Laravel map() is a Laravel Collections method to pass callback function to each item in Collection. It is a easy yet powerful method to manipulate data in Laravel Collection. After operating on each item, map() method returns new Collection object with updated items

use Illuminate\Support\Collection;
// Create a new collection

$collection = new Collection([
    'jhon', 'tom', 'mike', 'stuart'
]);

// Change all items to uppercase and create a new collection of them
$names = $collection->map(function($item, $key) {
   return strtoupper($item);
});
/*
Collection {#510 ▼
  #items: array:4 [▼
    0 => "JHON"
    1 => "TOM"
    2 => "MIKE"
    3 => "STUART"
  ]
}
*/
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Another example

$collection = User::get();
$modified = $collection->map(function($item, $key) {
     return [
        'id' => $item->id,
        'name' => $item->name,
        'creation_date' => $item->created_at->format('m/d/Y')];});
dd($modified);
/*
Illuminate\Support\Collection Object
(
    [items:protected] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [id] => 1
                    [name] => Hardik
                    [creation_date] => 04/19/2020
                )
            [1] => Array
                (
                    [id] => 2
                    [name] => HD Surgon
                    [creation_date] => 03/28/2020
                )
        )
)
*/
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Finally, you get to use the Splat Operator, meaning map, in an example that shows how to take advantage of these testicles with us

$collection = collect([['id' => 1, 'name' => 'MorCos']]);
$collection->map(fun (array $row) => [...$row, 'tags'=> 'random tag']);
/*
all : [
  [
    "id" => 1,
    "name" => "MorCos",
    "tags" => "random tag"
  ],
]
*/
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

I hope you enjoyed the code as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you. To dig deeper, check out these sources
https://www.hashbangcode.com/article/splat-operator-php
https://www.larashout.com/laravel-collections-map-method
https://morioh.com/p/06e430499865
https://www.itsolutionstuff.com/post/laravel-collection-map-method-exampleexample.html

Top comments (0)

An Animated Guide to Node.js Event Loop

Node.js doesn’t stop from running other operations because of Libuv, a C++ library responsible for the event loop and asynchronously handling tasks such as network requests, DNS resolution, file system operations, data encryption, etc.

What happens under the hood when Node.js works on tasks such as database queries? We will explore it by following this piece of code step by step.