Laravel merge arrays into one - php

Question

I have 2 tables and I want to make 1 array of both tables data.
Logic
User has bids
Either user is bidder which results come from bids table based on user_id column
Or user is owner and received bids which comes from projects table based on user_id column
I want to merge this 2 arrays into 1 (regardless of user being bidder or receiving bids, I want get all bids at once)
Code
This is what I have currently, but it's not good solution in case user is both bidder and owner, with current code user will only receive data of his/her bids as bidder only.
$bids = Bid::where('user_id', '=', $user->id)->with(['project', 'project.user', 'user'])->get();
if(count($bids) > 0) {
return response()->json([
'data' => BidsResource::collection($bids),
'message' => 'Your data is ready.'
], 200);
} else {
$projects = Project::where('user_id', $user->id)->pluck('id');
$bids = Bid::whereIn('project_id', $projects)->with(['project', 'project.user', 'user'])->get();
return response()->json([
'data' => BidsResource::collection($bids),
'message' => 'Your data is ready.'
], 200);
}
I have already tried array_merge but it return errors (details below).
// as bidder
$bids1 = Bid::where('user_id', '=', $user->id)->with(['project', 'project.user', 'user'])->get();
// as project owner
$projects = Project::where('user_id', $user->id)->pluck('id');
$bids2 = Bid::whereIn('project_id', $projects)->with(['project', 'project.user', 'user'])->get();
// merge results
$bids = array_merge($bids1, $bids2);
return response()->json([
'data' => BidsResource::collection($bids),
'message' => 'Data is ready.'
], 200);
array_merge Errors
Code above return array_merge(): Expected parameter 1 to be an array, object given
If I add ->get()->toArray(); then it would return Trying to get property 'id' of non-object
Any suggestions?
Update
BidsResource file
public function toArray($request)
{
$arrayData = [
'id' => $this->id,
'amount' => $this->amount ? "$ " .number_format($this->amount, 0) : "$0",
'note' => $this->note,
'attachment' => $this->attachment ? url('images', $this->attachment) : null,
'accepted' => $this->accepted,
'results' => $this->results,
'user' => new UserResource($this->whenLoaded('user')),
'project' => new ProjectsResource($this->whenLoaded('project')),
'chats' => BidChatsResource::collection($this->whenLoaded('chats')),
'created_at' => $this->created_at ? $this->created_at->diffForHumans() : null,
'updated_at' => $this->updated_at ? $this->updated_at->diffForHumans() : null,
];
return $arrayData;
}

Answer 1

In your specific case, the proper and efficient way would be using an OR clause to get the records where either of the conditions is satisfied.
The code would be
$projects = Project::where('user_id', $user->id)->pluck('id');
$bids = Bid::where(function($query) use ($projects, $user){
$query->where('user_id', '=', $user->id)->orWhereIn('project_id', $projects);
})->with(['project', 'project.user', 'user'])->get();

Answer 2

As the results of $bids1 and $bids2 are objects of laravel collection, you can use merge() method of collections#method-merge
$bids = $bids1->merge($bids2);