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Collections

Managur Collections is a library that provides a fully featured collection object to PHP.

What are collections?

Collections are similar to an array in PHP, but can be restricted to a specific type, both at the index and value level.

Collections also provide some built in functionality, such as being able to easily search the contents for a particular value, perform filtering, and to iterate through within a closed scope.

Let's take a look at some examples:

Installation

Before we can use Managur Collections, we need to install it. The recommended method is using PHP's package manager, Composer:

Example Usage

We'll assume that you have installed via Composer, and therefore are using Composer's autoloader.

There are two ways in that you can use Managur Collections. The first is using its class constructor, as follows:

The second way is to use the handy collect() function which is included:

And now you have a collection!

Restricting Key and Value types

Collections are great for type guarantees. If you're passing an array around, there are no guarantees that the array indexes or values are of any given type, which means that you will regularly need to check them around your application.

Managur Collections are easily constrained to a type, either by extending the base Collection class yourself, or by using the provided factory methods.

Integer Collection

If you need a collection that can ONLY have integer values, you can extend Managur Collections with your own class as follows:

Now, when you construct or append data to your IntegerCollection, if the data that you're trying to add to the collection isn't of the type Integer, a TypeError exception will be thrown which you can catch immediately.

Fail fast.

Miscellaneous Collection with Integer Keys

Similar to enforcing a type for the values, you can also fix the index (or key) types:

It is now impossible to use an index that is not an integer for this specific collection type.

You can combine the key and value restrictions to force a very specifically typed collection if you require.

Key Strategies

When you append() or offsetSet() a value to the collection, we call the protected keyStrategy() method, passing it the item that you want to collect. By default we return null, which tells append() and offsetSet() that you wish for the collection to use PHP’s default zero-indexed, auto-incrementing key IDs.

If this is not the case, whether because you simply wish to organise by your own keys, or because you’ve restricted the key type to a string, for example, you can override the keyStrategy() method in your child collection class to automatically set the key to a value of your choosing.

For example, in our hypothetical UserCollection class, we add this implementation of keyStrategy():

And once the key strategy is set, appending or setting items in the collection will have the key set appropriately.

Using Static Factory Methods to Dynamically Fix Typed Collections

We provide three methods that will generate an anonymous class with the same functionality as the main collection, but with enforced types for keys and/or values:

If you wish, you can use the newTypedCollection() method for all purposes, passing in null for the key (first argument) and/or the value (second argument) to get the specific combination that you require.

Tests

This library uses PHPUnit 7 to provide unit tests. To run the tests yourself, simply enter the following at a command line interface:

Tests should run automatically, assuming that you can call PHP directly from the command line (ie it is in your path).

We also automate testing with Github Actions. You can view the latest builds here.

Code Sniffer

We enforce PSR-2 coding standards. To test the code, run this command:

Fix Code Standard Failures

To automatically fix code standard failures, run this command:

Manual

Full functionality provided with Managur Collection is documented here:

Appending Data

Important: Appending will fail if you are using typed indexes

Data can be appended to a collection in one of two ways:

Array Syntax

Object Syntax

Offset Set

If you need to set a value to a specific index within the collection, do so as follows:

Note: If there was already data at this index, it will be overwritten

Array Syntax

Object Syntax

Map

map() provides a method to iterate over the collection, modifying them and returning a new collection with the changes. It will accept any callable as a parameter.

Because this function operates within a private scope, it protects any variables that exist outside of the loop, as well as preventing data within its scope from leaking into your wider code. For this reason, map() is recommended over a simple foreach() loop in most cases.

Here's a simple example of doubling the values of each value:

Map Into

The mapInto() method allows you to take any collection and in one call create a new collection of a given type, run a callable across the data, and have it immediately collected into the new collection.

Here's an example where we have created new collections that are restricted to allowing only integers to be collected in the first, and strings in the second:

We now have a StringCollection which contains a string representation of every value from the original $ints collection, multiplied by 10.

Slice

slice() provides a method to return the sequence of elements from the array

This works on the position in the array, not the key.

Here's a simple example slicing the first 2 elements from the array:

The PHP documentation has a full description of the way $offset and $limit behave.

Each

Sometimes we need to iterate over values, but we don't want to make any changes. That is where each() is different to map(). Otherwise, the functionality is identical.

Referring back to the map() example, here is an implementation of each() where we simply echo the doubled value, instead:

Reduce

We often loop over data to concatenate results. Maybe we want to get a list of all email addresses from a collection of users. This is where reduce() is our go-to method. You can reduce into anything.

The reduce() method requires a callback which takes two arguments; the carry variable that we'll be appending to in each iteration, and the value that we'll be using.

reduce() takes a final argument, which is the initialising carry value. This is optional, in which case null will be passed into your callback in the first iteration, so ensure that your callback will accept a null value. We do not recommend this, however, and suggest that you always provide an initial value of the same type that you want to be returned when the reduction is completed.

In this example, we'll pass in an empty array as our initial value, as you can see on the last line:

It's common for people to forget to apply the value to $carry and return $carry at the end. Don't forget this, else you'll find that everything reduces to null.

Filter

If you need to remove values from your collection, you can do so using the filter() method. If you call it without any arguments then any values that match the same criteria that the core empty() function returns true for, will be removed from the results.

You can optionally provide a callback that should return true if the data should be retained, or false to be filtered out.

Note: $filter() returns a new copy of the collection without the filtered values. It does not filter the original collection.

Here's an example where we will filter out all inactive users from our user collection:

Nice and simple, and again we're protecting scope so that we're not accidentally overwriting anything in our own code.

First

The first() method optionally takes a callback as an argument. If you do not provide this then it will return the first non-empty value from the collection.

If you do provide a callback, it will return the first value that matches the callback's criteria by returning true.

Let's look at an example where we get the first user who has a Gmail email address:

Last

last() is exactly the same as first(), with the (hopefully obvious) exception that it returns the last entry:

Contains

If you need to check whether a specific value exists within your collection, this is the method for you. You can also search with a callback, providing you with a really flexible search operation where you can match on partial or computed data.

contains() returns a boolean value, so you can use this to check conditions.

If a user with a Gmail address is found in the collection then $containsAGmailUser will be true.

Empty

The methods isEmpty() and isNotEmpty() are available to check whether the collection contains items or not.

Push

The push() method is similar to append(), in that it will only work if you have not defined a strict index type. The only way that it is different is that you can push multiple values in one operation:

Pop

pop() is a typical pop method, where the latest value will be returned, while simultaneously removed from the collection:

Now, $popped will equal 5, and the collection itself will now only contain the numbers 1 through 4.

Merge

If you have two compatible collections (ie they're not restricted to different types), you can merge them in one operation:

Note that a brand new collection is returned, so both $collection1 and $collection2 will remain as they were before.

Into

The into() method provides a readable method to copy the collection into another compatible collection:

There is also a provided function that collects directly into your preferred collection class:

Sort

If you need to sort your collection data, this is the method for you.

sort() will accept a callable if you wish to use a user-defined sorting algorithm, or you can call it with no arguments.

This is analogous to using the sort() and usort() functions with a simple array.

If you have specified a fixed index type then we will maintain the indexes for each value, similar to calling asort() or uasort() on a normal array.

This method will return a copy of the collection with the sorting applied.

ASort

Similar to sort(), the asort() method optionally accepts a callback to sort by a custom algorithm. The only difference between sort() and asort() is that index associations are maintained, regardless of whether the collection key type is constrained or not.

This method will return a copy of the collection with the sorting applied.

Shuffle

The shuffle() method will take your values, shuffle them randomly, and then return a new instance of the collection with the shuffled data:

shuffle() also takes an optional integer seed, which will be used to determine the start state of the pseudo random number generator (mt_rand()) that is used to determine the order that elements are shuffled into.

If you use the seed with shuffle(), the resulting collection will always have its elements in the same order for a given original collection and seed value. It will never return a different order for this combination.

Implode

The implode() method will take your collection and return a string with the items joined together with $glue

You may also pass an optional callable as the second argument which allows you to pick the specific properties from your collected objects when imploding: