How to merge elements of a collection in one array using Eloquent - php

Question

I'm trying the following:
I'm getting all clinic_tests related to my patients using the following function:
public function getPatientsClinicTests(Specialist $id)
{
$patientClinicTests = $id->patients()
->with('PatientClinicTests', 'PatientClinicTests.Patient.User')
->get()
->pluck('PatientClinicTests')
->filter(function ($value) { return !empty($value); });
$result = [];
foreach ($patientClinicTests as $array) {
$result = array_merge($result, $array->toArray());
}
return $result;
}
First group of code:
$patientClinicTests = $id->patients()
->with('PatientClinicTests', 'PatientClinicTests.Patient.User')
->get()
->pluck('PatientClinicTests')
->filter(function ($value) { return !empty($value); });
Brings me a collection of arrays as follows:
[
[
{
"id": 16,
"patient_id": 7,
"medical_condition_id": null,
"patient": {
"id": 7,
"user_id": 7,
"pigment_id": 14,
"id_medical_history": "6219116421",
"user": {
"id": 7,
"name": "Austen Wiegand",
}
}
},
.....
],
[
{
"id": 22,
"patient_id": 1,
"medical_condition_id": null,
"patient": {
"id": 7,
"user_id": 1,
"pigment_id": 14,
"id_medical_history": "6219116421",
"user": {
"id": 7,
"name": "Gregor Wiegand",
}
}
},
.......
]
]
As I need to return one array of elements I combine the arrays I got as follows:
$result = [];
foreach ($patientClinicTests as $array) {
$result = array_merge($result, $array->toArray());
}
return $result;
This returns one array as follows:
[
{
"id": 16,
"patient_id": 7,
"medical_condition_id": null,
"patient": {
"id": 7,
"user_id": 7,
"pigment_id": 14,
"id_medical_history": "6219116421",
"user": {
"id": 7,
"name": "Austen Wiegand",
}
}
},
{
"id": 22,
"patient_id": 1,
"medical_condition_id": null,
"patient": {
"id": 7,
"user_id": 1,
"pigment_id": 14,
"id_medical_history": "6219116421",
"user": {
"id": 7,
"name": "Gregor Wiegand",
}
}
},
.......
]
I would like to know if there is a smarter option to return as one array of elements using Eloquent instead a foreach statement.
Thanks a lot for your help!

Answer 1

you could use all() method to convert your collection to an array:
$patientClinicTests = $id->patients()
->with('PatientClinicTests', 'PatientClinicTests.Patient.User')
->get()
->pluck('PatientClinicTests')
->filter(function ($value) { return !empty($value); })->all();
please note that if you want to iterate over your array you should rebuild the array indexes after filtering ... you can do that using 'values' method:
$patientClinicTests = $id->patients()
->with('PatientClinicTests', 'PatientClinicTests.Patient.User')
->get()
->pluck('PatientClinicTests')
->filter(function ($value) { return !empty($value); })->values()->all();
more details in:
https://laravel.com/docs/7.x/collections#introduction

Answer 2

maybe you can use a collect method over the array to allign it in a single array
https://laravel.com/docs/7.x/collections
the link may be helpful
$collection = collect($patientClinicTests);
$collections = $collection->values()->all();
maybe this will work

Answer 3

Flatten method helps me to give a single array without using foreach statement an array_merge() function:
$patientClinicTests = $id->patients()
->with('PatientClinicTests', 'PatientClinicTests.Patient.User')
->get()
->pluck('PatientClinicTests')
->filter(function ($value) { return !empty($value); })->flatten()->all();
I will test using table joining as it has been recommended