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Collection

• Overview
• Installation
• How to use
  • Concrete implementation
  • Extending Collection
  • Mapping to and from a source
  • Writing
    • Adding elements
    • Merging collections
    • Removing elements
  • Filtering
    • Filter by predicate
  • Ordering
    • Sort by order and custom comparator
  • Retrieving
    • Retrieve count
    • Check if empty
    • Retrieve by condition
    • Retrieve single elements
    • Retrieve collection segments
  • Comparing
    • Check if collection contains element
    • Compare collections for equality
  • Aggregation
  • Transforming
    • Applying actions without modifying elements
    • Grouping elements
    • Mapping elements
    • Flattening elements
    • Convert to array
    • Convert to JSON
• FAQ
• License
• Contributing

Overview

Models a type-safe, fluent collection API for PHP, unifying arrays, iterators, and generators behind a single Collectible contract. Supports both eager and lazy evaluation pipelines, with chainable operations for mapping, filtering, grouping, reducing, and joining. Designed for predictable memory and CPU profiles in data-intensive workloads.

Installation

How to use

The library exposes the available behaviors through the Collectible interface and provides utilities to manipulate collections of various types.

Concrete implementation

The Collection class implements the Collectible interface and provides a concrete implementation for handling collections.

It allows for adding, removing, filtering, and sorting elements, as well as transforming them into different formats like arrays and JSON.

The class is designed to work with generic key-value pairs, ensuring type safety and flexibility for a variety of use cases.

Extending Collection

Domain collections should extend the Collection class to inherit all collection behavior:

Mapping to and from a source

Collection implements the IterableMappable contract from tiny-blocks/mapper, so a collection maps itself to and from arrays, JSON, and iterables. PHP carries no runtime element type for a collection, so a typed collection declares its element with the #[ElementType] attribute. The mapper builds each element through the declared type. Without the attribute, elements pass through unchanged.

An invoice the collection holds.

The collection declares its element type with the attribute.

The mapper builds the typed collection from a list of rows and serializes it back symmetrically.

toArray and toJson on the collection produce the same portable shape, so a collection serializes without an explicit Mapper at the call site.

Writing

These methods enable adding, removing, and modifying elements in the Collection.

Adding elements

• add: Returns a new collection with the specified elements appended.

Merging collections

• merge: Merges the elements of another Collectible into the current Collection.

Removing elements

• remove: Returns a new collection with all occurrences of the specified element removed.

• removeAll: Returns a new collection with elements removed.

  • With a predicate: Removes only the elements that satisfy the given predicate.

  • Without a predicate: Removes all elements from the Collection.

Filtering

These methods enable filtering elements in the Collection based on specific conditions.

Filter by predicate

• filter: Retains only elements satisfying all given predicates.

  • With predicates: Retains elements that satisfy the provided predicates.

  • Without predicates: Removes all falsy values (e.g., null, false, 0, '', empty arrays).

Ordering

These methods enable sorting elements in the Collection based on the specified order and optional comparator.

Sort by order and custom comparator

• sort: Returns a new sorted collection.

  By default, Order::ASCENDING_KEY is used.

  Sort the Collection using a custom comparator to determine how elements should be compared.

Retrieving

These methods allow access to elements within the Collection, such as fetching the first or last element, counting the elements, or finding elements that match a specific condition.

Retrieve count

• count: Returns the total number of elements in the Collection.

Check if empty

• isEmpty: Determines whether the collection has no elements.

Retrieve by condition

• findBy: Finds the first element that satisfies any given predicate, or returns null if no predicate matches. When called without predicates, it returns null.

Retrieve single elements

• first: Retrieves the first element from the Collection or returns a default value if the Collection is empty.

• getBy: Retrieves an element by its zero-based index or returns a default value if the index is out of bounds.

• last: Retrieves the last element from the Collection or returns a default value if the Collection is empty.

Retrieve collection segments

• slice: Extracts a contiguous segment of the collection, starting at the specified offset. If length is negative, it excludes that many elements from the end. If length is not provided or set to -1, it returns all elements from the specified offset to the end.

Comparing

These methods enable comparing collections to check for equality or to verify element membership.

Check if collection contains element

• contains: Checks if the Collection contains a specific element. Uses strict equality for scalars and loose equality for objects.

Compare collections for equality

• equals: Compares the current Collection with another collection for element-wise equality.

Aggregation

These methods perform operations that return a single value based on the Collection's content, such as summing or combining elements.

• reduce: Combines all elements in the Collection into a single value using the provided accumulator function and an initial value. This method is helpful for accumulating results, like summing or concatenating values.

• joinToString: Joins all elements into a string with the given separator.

Transforming

These methods allow the Collection's elements to be transformed or converted into different formats.

Applying actions without modifying elements

• each: Executes actions on each element in the Collection without modification. The method is helpful for performing side effects, such as logging or accumulating values.

Grouping elements

• groupBy: Groups the elements in the Collection based on the provided classifier.

Mapping elements

• map: Applies transformations to each element in the Collection and returns a new collection with the transformed elements.

Flattening elements

• flatten: Flattens nested iterables by exactly one level. Non-iterable elements are yielded as-is.

Convert to array

• toArray: Converts the Collection into an array.

  By default, KeyPreservation::PRESERVE is used.

Convert to JSON

• toJson: Converts the Collection into a JSON string.

  By default, KeyPreservation::PRESERVE is used.

FAQ

01. Why is my iterator consumed after certain operations?

The Collection class leverages PHP's Generators to provide lazy evaluation, meaning elements are only generated as needed.

It cannot be reused once a generator is consumed (i.e., after you iterate over it or apply certain operations).

This behavior is intended to optimize memory usage and performance but can sometimes lead to confusion when reusing an iterator after operations like count, toJson, or toArray.

02. How does lazy evaluation affect memory usage in Collection?

Lazy evaluation, enabled by PHP's Generators, allows Collection to handle large datasets without loading all elements into memory at once.

This results in significant memory savings when working with large datasets or performing complex chained operations.

However, this also means that some operations will consume the generator, and you cannot access the elements unless you recreate the Collection.

03. What is the difference between eager and lazy evaluation?

Both modes share the same execution model. Transforming operations append a stage to the pipeline at the call site without iterating. Terminal operations run the fused pass over all chained stages.

The difference is what each mode does at creation and after the fused pass completes:

• Eager (createFrom*): the source is materialized into an array at creation. The first terminal call runs the fused pass and caches the result. Subsequent terminal calls reuse the cache.
• Lazy (createLazyFrom*): the source is stored by reference. Every terminal call re-runs the entire pipeline.

Notation. n = source size at the terminal call. P = total cost of the fused pass, equal to the sum of the per-element contributions of every chained stage. For a pipeline of pure per-element stages, P is O(n · s), where s is the number of stages. Non-linear stages (sort, groupBy) dominate P.

Creation

Transforming

Transforming methods append a pipeline stage at the call site and execute only during the fused pass.

Terminal

Terminal methods trigger the fused pass. Eager cells show first call / subsequent calls when they differ. Subsequent calls read the cache without re-running the pipeline.

Eager aggregation terminals iterate the cached array without re-running the pipeline. Lazy terminals re-run the pipeline on every call. Eager indexing terminals (count, first, last, getBy, isEmpty) return in O(1) from the cache after the first access.

License

Collection is licensed under MIT.

Contributing

Please follow the contributing guidelines to contribute to the project.