Getting a specific eloquent object out of a collection in Laravel - php

Question

I have a function that looks for possible boxes that can carry the article.
public static function get_possible_boxes($article,$quantity)
{
$i = 0;
$possible_boxes = array();
$total_weight = $articles->grams * $quantity;
$boxes = Boxes::all();
foreach($boxes as $box)
{
if($total_weight+ $box->grams < $box->max_weight)
{
$possible_boxes[$i] = $box;
$i++;
}
}
return collect($possible_boxes);
}
This gives me a collection with boxes that can carry my items.
Now I should check if the ID of the box selected by the customer exists. If it does not exist, it will pick the first valid one.
This is where I am stuck. I have tried to use puck:
public function someotherfunction(){
...
$boxes = get_possible_boxes($something,$number);
$valid_box = $boxes->where("id", $request->selected_box)->pluck("id");
if(!$valid_box){
$valid_box = $boxes[0]
}
...
This works if the selected box cannot be used. The function pluck only gives me the id, clearly it is not the function I am looking for and I have already read the Laravel documentation.
So the question is, how do I get the correct eloquent model ?

Answer 1

You're looking for the first() method.
$valid_box = $boxes->where("id", $request->selected_box)->first();
Alternatively, if you rework your get_possible_boxes() method to return a Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection instead of a plain Illuminate\Support\Collection, you could use the find() method, like so:
Function:
public static function get_possible_boxes($article,$quantity)
{
$total_weight = $article->grams * $quantity;
$boxes = Boxes::all()->filter(function ($box) use ($total_weight) {
return $total_weight + $box->grams < $box->max_weight;
});
return $boxes;
}
Find:
$boxes = get_possible_boxes($something, $number);
$valid_box = $boxes->find($request->selected_box) ?? $boxes->first();
And you could probably squeeze out a little more performance by adding the weight condition as part of the SQL query instead of filtering the collection after you've returned all the boxes, but I left that up to you.

Answer 2

What you want is probably filter.
$valid_box = $boxes->filter(function($box) use ($request){
return $box->id == $request->selected_box;
});
if($valid_box)...
I should note that if you don't want $valid_box to be a collection, you can use first instead of filter in the exact same way to only get the object back.

Answer 3

It could be done in many ways but I would rather use the following approach:
$boxes = get_possible_boxes($something,$number)->keyBy('id');
$valid_box = $boxes->get($request->selected_box) ?: $boxes->first();