Collection sorting appears to be altered on v10.1.0

[browner12]

• Laravel Version: 10.1.0
• PHP Version: 8.2.2
• Database Driver & Version: MySQL 8.0.32

Description:

After upgrading to Laravel 10.1.0, I was getting some test failures that appeared to be related to Collection sorting. I reverted back to Laravel v10.0.3 and all tests passed again.

I haven't had time to deep dive in yet, but will soon and report back with more info.

Steps To Reproduce:

Possibly use the Collection sort() method. Will provide more details as I dig in.

[zeriyoshi]

Are you using one of the following functions? If so, the #46105 may be affected

• srand
• rand
• mt_srand
• mt_rand
• shuffle
• str_shuffle
• array_rand

[browner12]

Yes, was able to trace the issue back to #46105, and specifically because of my use of the Collection::random() method.

In <10.1.0, calling random() would get random elements, but they would always be returned in the order they existed in the original collection. In >=10.1.0, you now actually get back random elements in a random order.

Before:

$collection = new Collection([
    'alpha',
    'bravo',
    'charile',
]);

dump($collection->random(3)->toArray());

//['alpha', 'bravo', 'charlie'];

After:

$collection = new Collection([
    'alpha',
    'bravo',
    'charile',
]);

dump($collection->random(3)->toArray());

//['alpha', 'charlie', 'bravo'];
//['charlie', 'bravo', 'alpha'];
//['bravo', 'alpha', 'charlie'];

For most of my tests I didn't actually care about the order, so I was able to switch from using assertEquals() to assertEqualsCanonicalizing, which does not require the order of arrays to be the same.

In other tests I had to sort my random elements to make sure they specifically matched returned results.

---

As minor as this is, it feels like a breaking change to me. Even though Laravel does not explicitly call out the order elements may be returned, because Arr::random() defers to PHP's array_rand(), I feel like we are required to maintain that behavior. The array_rand() documentation explicitly states:

If multiple keys are returned, they will be returned in the order they were present in the original array.

https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.array-rand.php

For me specifically, this just exposed some brittleness/assumptions in my tests, but for other people it may have a more serious impact.

[nunomaduro]

It should be fixed on the 10.1.2 release. Thank you for reporting this.