Merge two mysql rows into one using laravel - php

Question

I have a table named messages that has the structure as follow:
id | sender_id | receiver_id | message | sent_at
I have made a system that whenever a user selects a particular user the messages that are sent by or received by him are shown in the page in proper manner. For that I have the following code that does the thing:
<script type="text/javascript">
function showMessages(elem){
let id = $(elem).attr('id');
let myId = "<?php echo \Session::get('user_id'); ?>";
console.log(id, myId);
$.get("/get-messages",
{
id_no_1: id,
id_no_2: myId
}, function(data){
alert(data)
});
}
Here, I get the user_id of the associated user and my own user and perform an AJAX request to the route and the route has:
Route::get('/get-messages', 'PagesController#getMessages');
And my major function looks like this:
public function getMessages(){
$id_no_1 = request('id_no_1');
$id_no_2 = request('id_no_2');
$messagesSendByOneToTwo = DB::table('messages')
->where('sender_id', $id_no_1)
->where('receiver_id', $id_no_2)
->get();
// $messagesSendByOneToTwo = json_encode($messagesSendByOneToTwo);
$messagesSendByTwoToOne = DB::table('messages')
->where('sender_id', $id_no_2)
->where('receiver_id', $id_no_1)
->get();
// $messagesSendByOneToTwo = json_encode($messagesSendByTwoToOne);
$allMessages = array_merge($messagesSendByOneToTwo, $messagesSendByTwoToOne);
$allMessages = json_encode($allMessages);
echo $allMessages;
}
There I have two variables and I want to merge the two variable into a single variable. I tried array_merge(); which I knew wouldn't work because the variables aren't arrays. To this problem, I have the following possible solutions:
Merge the two variables into one and perform things with it. (But, I don't know how to do that.
Send two variables as the response to the JavaScript function handling the response (which I have never heard of).
Returning to a new view with the variables (which doesn't seem to be a good idea)
So, what should I do to solve this problem?
The best way would be to merge the variables into a new one so what should I do here?

Answer 1

There's no reason for you to do two queries to begin with:
public function getMessages(){
$id_no_1 = request('id_no_1');
$id_no_2 = request('id_no_2');
$messagesSent = DB::table('messages')
->whereIn('sender_id', [ $id_no_1, $id_no_2 ])
->whereIn('receiver_id', [ $id_no_1, $id_no_2 ])
->get();
return response()->json($messagesSent); //This is better than echoing json
}

Answer 2

If you want an array you can try following code to get array instead of collection.
messagesSendByOneToTwo = DB::table('messages')
->where('sender_id', $id_no_1)
->where('receiver_id', $id_no_2)
->get()->toArray();