Laravel 5 Collections: Retrieving a Specified Number of Items From a Collection With take

The take method is a useful method that will return the provided number of items (up to the provided $limit) from the collection. If the $limit is negative, it will return a number of items (up to the provided $limit) from the end of the collection, otherwise the items will be returned from the beginning of the collection. The take method returns a new Collection instance and does not modify the original collection.

#Signature

1public function take(
2    $limit
3);

#Example Use

The following example demonstrates the usage of the take method:

 1use Illuminate\Support\Collection;
 2
 3// Create a new collection instance.
 4$collection = new Collection([
 5    'first', 'second', 'third', 'fourth'
 6]);
 7
 8// Take two items from the beginning of the collection.
 9$positiveLimit = $collection->take(2);
10
11// Take two items from the end of the collection.
12$negativeLimit = $collection->take(-2);

After the above code has executed both $positiveLimit and $negativeLimit will be an instance of Collection. The $positiveLimit variable will contain a value similar to the following output:

1object(Illuminate\Support\Collection)
2  protected 'items' => 
3    array
4      0 => string 'first'
5      1 => string 'second'

And the $negativeLimit variable will contain a value similar to the following output:

1object(Illuminate\Support\Collection)
2  protected 'items' => 
3    array
4      0 => string 'third'
5      1 => string 'fourth'

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