Laravel 5 Collections: Converting a Collection's Contents to JSON With toJson

The toJson method will return a JSON encoded version of the data stored within the collection instance. It internally does this by returning a call to PHP's json_encode function, passing in any $options that were supplied. Like the json_encode function, the $options parameter is a bitmask of the predefined JSON constants.

#Signature

1public function toJson(
2    $options = 0
3);

#Example Use

The following code examples demonstrate the basic use of the toJson method:

1// Create a new collection instance.
2$collection = new Collection([
3    ['name' => 'Shirley', 'age' => 60],
4    ['name' => 'John',    'age' => 55]
5]);
6 
7// Convert the collection to JSON.
8$jsonValue = $collection->toJson();

After the above code executes, $jsonValue would contain the following value:

1[{"name":"Shirley","age":60},{"name":"John","age":55}]

Alternatively, a well-formatted value can be returned by passing in the JSON_PRETTY_PRINT constant:

1// Create a new collection instance.
2$collection = new Collection([
3    ['name' => 'Shirley', 'age' => 60],
4    ['name' => 'John',    'age' => 55]
5]);
6 
7// Convert the collection to JSON.
8$jsonValue = $collection->toJson(JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

This time, the $jsonValue would contain the following value:

 1[
 2    {
 3        "name": "Shirley",
 4        "age": 60
 5    },
 6    {
 7        "name": "John",
 8        "age": 55
 9    }
10]

#toJson and Deeply Nested Data Structures

The toJson method internally makes a call to PHP's json_encode function. Unlike PHP's json_encode function, the toJson method does not provide a way to specify the depth (essentially how many arrays are nested inside of each other) to which data will be encoded, which is by default set to 512. To convert a collection instance into its JSON equivalent with a depth greater than 512, the following approach will be sufficient:

 1use Illuminate\Support\Collection;
 2 
 3// Create a new collection instance.
 4$collection = new Collection([]);
 5 
 6// Replace 512 with the desired depth.
 7$jsonValue = json_encode(
 8                $collection->jsonSerialize(),
 9                0,
10                512
11            );

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