Laravel Collection Public API: slice

slice($offset, $length = null, $preserveKeys = false)

The slice method is used to return a slice, or portion of the collection starting at the given $offset. The $offset tells the slice method where to begin when creating the collection. For example, if the $offset is 3, the new collection will begin with the third item in the collection. If the $offset is negative, the new collection will start that distance from the end of the collection. The slice method returns a new Collection instance and will not modify the original Collection instance.

The following code example demonstrates the usage of the slice method using a simple collection:

 1<?php
 2 
 3use Illuminate\Support\Collection;
 4 
 5// Create a new collection instance.
 6$collection = new Collection([1, 2, 3, 4, 5 , 6, 7, 8]);
 7 
 8// Slice the collection starting at the third item.
 9// The returned collection will contain items
10// 4, 5, ,7 and 8.
11$sliced = $collection->slice(3);

After the above code has executed the $sliced variable will be an instance of Collection and contain a value similar to the following output:

1object(Illuminate\Support\Collection)[134]
2  protected 'items' =>
3    array (size=5)
4      0 => int 4
5      1 => int 5
6      2 => int 6
7      3 => int 7
8      4 => int 8

The same result can be accomplished using a negative $offset like so:

1<?php
2 
3// Slice the collection starting starting at the
4// fifth item from the end of the collection. The
5// returned collection will contain the items
6// 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.
7$sliced = $collection->slice(-5);

After the above code has executed, like before, the $sliced variable would be an instance of Collection and would contain a value similar to the following output:

1object(Illuminate\Support\Collection)[134]
2  protected 'items' =>
3    array (size=5)
4      0 => int 4
5      1 => int 5
6      2 => int 6
7      3 => int 7
8      4 => int 8

The $length parameter allows developers to control the size of the returned Collection. If the provided $length is positive, the returned collection will have up that many items. The total number of items can be less than the supplied $length if the original collection does not have enough items to satisfy the $length. If the $length is negative, the returned collection will stop that many items from the end of the original collection. The following example shows the various uses of the $length parameter using the $collection instance created earlier:

 1<?php
 2 
 3// The returned collection will contain the items
 4// 2, 3 and 4.
 5$sliced = $collection->slice(1, 3);
 6 
 7// The returned collection will contain the items
 8// 1, 2 and 3.
 9$sliced = $collection->slice(0, 3);
10 
11// The returned collection will contain the items
12// 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
13$sliced = $collection->slice(0, -3);

By default, the slice method will reorder and reset the keys of the returned collection's items. This can be changed by passing true as the argument for the $preserveKeys parameter. The following code samples show the affect of the $preserveKeys parameter:

1<?php
2 
3// Slice the collection without preserving keys.
4$sliced = $collection->slice(2, 3);
5 
6// Slice the collection while preserving keys.
7$preservedKeySlice = $collection->slice(2, 3, true);

After the above code has executed, the $sliced variable will be an instance of Collection and contain a value similar to the following output:

1object(Illuminate\Support\Collection)[134]
2  protected 'items' =>
3    array (size=3)
4      0 => int 3
5      1 => int 4
6      2 => int 5

Notice that the keys of the collection are 0, 1 and 2. The following output is for the $preservedKeySlice variable (which is also an instance of Collection). Notice how the keys are 2, 3 and 4, because they were preserved:

1object(Illuminate\Support\Collection)[135]
2  protected 'items' =>
3    array (size=3)
4      2 => int 3
5      3 => int 4
6      4 => int 5

∎