Handling sets of data.
WHAT A COLLECTION IS
A wrapper around an array with a large set of operations.
WHAT IT PROVIDES
Filtering, mapping, grouping, sorting, summing, and much more, chainable.
WHY IT MATTERS
It replaces loops with expressions describing intent.
WHAT ELOQUENT RETURNS
Collections, so these operations are available on query results.
WHAT TO BE CAREFUL WITH
Doing in a collection what the database should do.
WHY
Filtering thousands of records in PHP after loading them all is far slower than filtering in the query.
WHAT TO PUSH TO THE DATABASE
Filtering Sorting Aggregation Limiting
WHAT TO DO IN A COLLECTION
Transformation of results already retrieved Grouping for presentation
WHAT TO WATCH
Memory, on large collections.
WHAT TO USE FOR LARge VOLUMES
Lazy processing, which does not hold everything at once.
WHAT TO AVOID
Long chains nobody can follow Collections used where a simple loop is clearer
