Add a dd function to the collection class

[freekmurze]

Image you are debugging a collection chain. You want to see what the values are after the map function in the example below. To do that you could wrap the code starting from the collection call until right after the map function in a dd function.

dd(collect($items)
  ->filter(function() { 
     ... 
   })
   ->unique(function() { 
      ... 
   })
   ->map(function() {
     ... 
   }))
   ->sortBy(function() { 
      ...
   });

It's a bit of work to debug like this. You have to insert code a the beginning of the collection and an extra closing parenthesis after the map function. To my eyes this isn't very readable. It's also a bit of a hassle to remove the dd statement, that closing parenthesis is easily forgotten. I'm exaggerating the problems a bit, but debugging like this becomes tiresome real quick.

If we'd add a dd function to Collection the workflow can be drastically improved. This is how the function would look like

public function dd() 
{
   dd($this);
}

Nice 'n' simple.

This is how it can be used:

collect($items)
  ->filter(function() { 
     ... 
   })
   ->unique(function() { 
      ... 
   })
   ->map(function() {
     ... 
   })
   ->dd()
   ->sortBy(function() { 
      ...
   });

To see the values after a particular step in the chain you simply have to add one line of code. It's perfectly readable. After you've done your debugging there's only one line to remove. Using for example PHPStorm's alt+shift+arrow-up and alt+shift+arrow-down shortcuts the ->dd() line can be easily moved to the previous or next part of the collection chain.

What are your thoughts on adding this to Collection? Handy? Or feature creep? I've not ran any statistics but pretty sure a lot of users will be happy with this 😄

If the response is positive I'll send a PR.

[franzliedke]

What about the more generic tap? (That would allow to pass a closure that can do anything - such as dd with the current array of items - without having to return it like with map.)

[freekmurze]

I've already submitted a PR with the functionality you're describing. I've named it pipe, like in @adamwathan 's excellent book on collections.

If that PR get's accepted you can do this:

...
->pipe('dd');
...

imho because dd'ing a collection is so handy and you'll probably do it a lot, it could deserve it's on short function.

[rossbearman]

I'd certainly be in favour of it. Even with xdebug easily available, I still end up dd()ing data a lot and just dropping a new function into the chain is less disruptive than having to wrap and unwrap parts of it as you go.

The only real negatives I can see are that it's a purely development focused tool that introduces a new side effect to Collections (that they can dump their data directly to output) and the functionality can be very quickly implemented with a macro. But I'm not convinced that that's a good argument not to include something that essentially requires no maintenance due to it's simplicity and provides a good quality of life improvement to working with Collection pipelines.

[JosephSilber]

The general idea sounds good, although if the pipe PR gets merged this is of less importance.

If we do do this, I think it should dd($this->all()) or maybe even dd($this->toArray()).

[sebastiandedeyne]

@JosephSilber I think I have a slight favor for dd($this). It could be useful to see the object type you're working with, like when you're not sure whether you have an eloquent or a base collection.

[JosephSilber]

@sebastiandedeyne you could still do it the old way. Just saying that 99% of the time ->all() or toArray() would be what you want.

[rossbearman]

Would it be worth optionally supporting passing a callback in to the dd() method of the Collection class to allow more complex output with the current Collection? Something like:

    /**
     * @param  callable  $callback
     * @return static
     */
    public function dd(callable $callback = null)
    {
        if(is_callable($callback)) {
            dd($callback($this));
        }

        dd($this->all());
    }

[JosephSilber]

Nah. Just use pipe.

[garygreen]

Trouble with doing this is you could say the same about models and other things. If I've done a big collection this like that I would have it in a variable anyway so could just do dd($collection);

[freekmurze]

Meanwhile I've created a package containing the dd macro along with a few
others that don't really belong in the core.

https://github.com/spatie/laravel-collection-macros

On Friday, 19 August 2016, Gary Green notifications@github.com wrote:

Trouble with doing this is you could say the same about models and other
things. If I've done a big collection this like that I would have it in a
variable anyway so could just do dd($collection);

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[taylorotwell]

Closing this since we have pipe I guess.