Laravel Array Helpers Every Developer Should Know About

Laravel is known for its elegance, simplicity, and expressiveness. One of the most powerful features of Laravel is its helper functions. Laravel's array helpers are an essential tool for developers working with arrays of data.

This article will explore some Laravel array helper functions that every developer should know. These helpers can save time and make working with arrays more manageable. We'll cover join(), keyBy(), get(), first(), last(), and pluck(). So, let's dive in and see what Laravel's array helpers have to offer!

Array Join

You might be thinking, "why do I need this helper when I can use join() or implode()?"

use Illuminate\Support\Arr;

$stack = ['Tailwind', 'Alpine', 'Laravel', 'Livewire'];

Arr::join($stack, ', ');
// Tailwind, Alpine, Laravel, Livewire
implode($stack, ', ');
// Tailwind, Alpine, Laravel, Livewire

The above work exactly the same, so I'll leave it up to you to decide which style you prefer.

Where the join() helper really comes in handy is when you want the last value to use a separate joining string:

use Illuminate\Support\Arr;

$stack = ['Tailwind', 'Alpine', 'Laravel', 'Livewire'];

Arr::join($stack, ', ', ', and');
// Tailwind, Alpine, Laravel, and Livewire

Keyed Array data

Sometimes you'll take an array of data (i.e., multiple products) and key the data by a given product attribute. That way, you can conveniently target data for a given key.

You might have written something like the following, creating a new variable and stuffing the data into it by a keyed value:

 $array = [
    ['product_id' => 'prod-100', 'name' => 'Desk'],
    ['product_id' => 'prod-200', 'name' => 'Chair'],
];
$keyed = [];

foreach ($array as $value) {
    $keyed[$value['product_id']] = $value;
}
/*
    [
        'prod-100' => ['product_id' => 'prod-100', 'name' => 'Desk'],
        'prod-200' => ['product_id' => 'prod-200', 'name' => 'Chair'],
    ]
*/

Using the Arr::keyBy() method, you can do the same thing with one line of code:

$keyed = Arr::keyBy($array, 'product_id');

Checking and Getting Data from an Array

The mighty Arr::get() method is simple to use, but contains a powerful "dot notation" you can use to get nested data easily:

use Illuminate\Support\Arr;

$data = [
    'products' => [
        'desk' => [
            'name' => 'Oakendesk'
            'price' => 599.00,
            'description' => 'Solid oak desk built from scratch.'
        ],
    ],
];
// 599.00
Arr::get($data, 'products.desk.price');

// Returns false
Arr::has($data, 'products.desk.discount');

// Returns null
Arr::get($data, 'products.desk.discount');

// Returns custom default value if not found.
Arr::get($data, 'products.desk.discount', ['type' => 'percent', 'value' => 10]);

Getting the first or last element in an array

When you have an array and want to get the last element, you can reach for the end() function in PHP:

$array = [100, 200, 300, 110];

end($array);

If your array is empty, though, you will get false instead:

$array = [];
end($array); // false

Using Laravel's last() helper, you have multiple options when an array is empty:

use Illuminate\Support\Arr;

$array = [];

Arr::last($array); // null

// Provide a default
Arr::last($array, null, 100); // 100

Using Laravel's helper also enables you to pass a closure as a second argument as the condition for which element to return first or last respectively:

$array = [100, 200, 300, 110];

Arr::last($array, fn ($e) => $e > 110); // 300
Arr::first($array, fn ($e) => $e > 110); // 200

Simple but powerful API for the many situations you might find yourself in with getting the first or last element within array data.

Plucking Data from an Array

Sometimes you need to get one scalar piece of data from a collection of data (i.e., emails from users):

$array = [
    ['user' => ['id' => 1, 'name' => 'User 1', 'email' => '[email protected]']],
    ['user' => ['id' => 2, 'name' => 'User 2', 'email' => '[email protected]']],
];
$emails = [];

foreach ($array as $result) {
    $emails[] = $result['user']['email'];
}
/*
[
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
]
*/

Laravel's Arr::pluck() helper makes this trivial:

Arr::pluck($array, 'user.email');

Learn More

I hope you have seen a theme: helpers replace redundant tasks with expressive syntax. I believe they have a few other benefits: we can tap into the extra power some of these methods provide when needed (i.e. a closure condition in first() and last()), and it avoids temporary variables and loops that create mental overhead for repetitive things.

Though on the surface, function helpers in any language can seem redundant from using the built-in language features; however, I hope you've seen how powerful they can make redundant things you'll need to do in many of your applications. We've only scratched the surface of everything available in the Arr class. Sometimes we need simple array helpers, and other times you'll want the power of collections.

If you're new to the Laravel framework, check out the Helpers documentation to learn about all the useful string and array helpers at your fingertips in Laravel projects. Likely, you'll want these helpers in other PHP projects that aren't using Laravel too!