How I refactor to collections

Checkout the book here.

Example 1

Here I needed to build a string from an array to create an unique cache key for given search filters. When you first look at the before and after examples, you could question if the collection version is a better choice here. This is because it looks a little bit more complex. But this is just the first impression. The collection version of this code has some great benefits:

• as always with collections, the code tells you more about what is happening
• it separates steps and helps you do one thing after the other
• it is easier to add more functionality like adding a filter

Before

$returnString = '';
foreach ($filters as $key => $item) {
    $returnString .= $key .':' . $item . ',';
}

Afterwards

$returnString = collect($filters)
    ->map(function($value, $key) {
        return $key . ':' . $value;
    })->implode(',');

Example 2

This second example is from a private project of mine where I work with recipes and recipe steps. When you create a new recipe you need to store recipe steps too. We are mapping an input array of recipe step data to a new collection of recipeSteps objects. Collections are also great here, because we can use them with the saveMany method like this: $newRecipe->recipeSteps()->saveMany($recipeSteps);

Before

$steps = $input['step'];
$recipeSteps = [];
foreach ($steps as $step) {
    $recipeSteps[] = new RecipeStep(['recipe_id' => $recipeId, 'desc' => $step['desc']]);
}

Afterwards

$steps = collect($input['step'])
$recipeSteps = $steps->map(function($step) use ($recipeId) {
    return new RecipeStep(['recipe_id' => $recipeId, 'desc' => $step['desc']]);
});

Example 3

The third example is from my Twitter notification channel, which I built as one of the unofficial Laravel notification channels. Here I needed to collect some image IDs. In order to get them, I need to call an upload method on every image. When you want to create a new array from a given one, map is the collection method you need. Additionally this is a good example for getting rid of an unnecessary temporary variable: $mediaAids.

Before

$mediaIds = [];


foreach ($imagePaths as $imagePath) {

    $media = $this->connection->upload('media', ['media' => $imagePath]);

    $mediaIds[] = $media->media_id_string;

}


    
$twitterMessage->imageIds = $mediaIds;

Afterwards

$twitterMessage->imageIds = $imagePaths->map(function ($path) {

    $media = $this->connection->upload('media', ['media' => $path]);


    
    return $media->media_id_string;

});

Example 4

This example is from our chatbot NELA and is a little bit more complex. Given is an array of countries and we need to find a country, starting with a given character. Additionally there could be a list of already used words, which we do not want to get returned. What I like here is how refactoring to collections helps me clarify what I really want to do. When you work with loops and if statements it often gets confusing what it actually is you want to do. And of course it is really hard to read the code. So this is what we want to do here:

• we have countries and we want countries, which means we need a filter method here
• only return countries with the given first character
• and countries which are not already used
• and because we only want one of them, we can use the random method too

Before

foreach ($countries as $country) {
    if (strtolower(substr($country, 0, 1)) == $char) {

        if (!empty($notWords)) {
            if (in_array($country, $notWords)) {
                continue;
            }
        }

        return $country;
    }
}

return false;

Afterwards

$countries = collect($countries);
return $country = $countries->filter(function($country) use ($char, $notWords) {
   return strtolower(substr($country, 0, 1)) == $char && !in_array($country, $notWords);
})->random();

Cheat sheet

If you're still struggling with figuring out which collection method you can use when, then this litte cheat sheet will help you:

• use filter when the output type is the same, but you just need specific items

// Get only users with a score higher than 1000
$topUsers = $users->filter(function($user) {
    return $user->score > 1000;
});

• use each when you need to do an action on each item

// Invite a given collection of users to something
$users->each(function($user) {
    $user->sendInvite();
});

• use map when you need to create a different collection from a given one

// Get all the phone numbers from a collection of users
$userPhoneNumners = $users->map(function($user) {
    return $user->phone_number;
});

Often you need to do do multiple actions with a given collection of data. This is the case when you're able to chain those collection methods:

// Using multiple collection methods in order to get the best users
// send them an invations
// collect their phone numbers in order to call them personally too
$userPhoneNumbers = $users->filter(function($user) {
    return $user->score > 1000;
})->each(function($user) {
    $user->sendInvite();
})->map(function($user) {
    return $user->phone_number;
});

Conclusion

After reading the book you're like: Hell yeah! This is awesome and I will use that now all the time!=) But actually it takes some time until you can really use these methods in your day-to-day work. This is why it is a good idea to try to refactor some given code basis of you. This really helps you to think about where these techniques are useful and to get a feeling for your future code.