Laravel Collection Public API: toArray

toArray

The toArray method is similar to the all method in that it will return the underlying array that the collection instance is using. The difference, however, is that the toArray method will convert any object instance it can into arrays (namely any object that implements the Illuminate\Contracts\Support\Arrayable interface). Consider the following code:

 1<?php
 2 
 3use Illuminate\Support\Collection;
 4 
 5$items = [
 6    'first'  => 'I am first',
 7    'second' => 'I am second',
 8    'third'  => new Collection([
 9            'first' => 'I am nested'
10    ])
11];
12 
13$collection = Collection::make($items);
14 
15$returnedItems = $collection->toArray();

After the above code has executed, the $returnedItems variable would contain a value similar to the following output:

1array (size = 3)
2  'first'  => string 'I am first'     (length=10)
3  'second' => string 'I am second'    (length=11)
4  'third'  =>
5    array (size=1)
6      'first' => string 'I am nested' (length=11)

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