PHP has a lot of great functions and these are some I like to use and I will show you why.
in_array($needle, $haystack)
This function is great for comparing a value to multiple options, especially while using it for if statements.
if ($type === 'photo' || $type === 'image' || $type === 'file') {
...
}
// After
if (in_array($type, ['photo', 'image', 'file'], $strict = true)) {
...
}
array_column($array, $column, $index)
This is a handy function to turn an already existing array into a key-value array that can be used for looping through and use for a select field for example. This is for example really powerful if you are fetching a list from an API and you want the user to select one of the options for the next API call. The only downside is that you can't use it on a multi-layered array, for this I would advise using the collection class of Laravel
[
'id' => 12,
'name' => 'John',
'email' => 'john@example.com',
],
[
'id' => 34,
'name' => 'Jane',
'email' => 'jane@example.com',
],
]
// Keep in mind that the last argument is optional,
// if you don’t pass it through it will start at zero
$returned = array_column($array, 'name', 'id');
// Will result into this
[
12 => 'John',
34 => 'Jane',
];
array_merge(...$arrays)
This is great if you have a fixed set of options that you want to overwrite based on some conditionals. I use this a lot in test files when I want to create multiple records that have the same default values for 90% of the time.
{
return Post::factory($amount)->create(array_merge([
// This will be the default data that can be overwritten.
'user_id' => $this->userId,
], $data));
}
