I need a one liner to get from this [1, 2, 3] to ["1", "2", "3"]

I am grabbing ids from users:

DB::table('users')
    ->get()
    ->pluck('id')

DB::table('users')
    ->get()
    ->pluck('id')

and this will give me an array with integers like:

[1, 2, 3, 4, ...]

[1, 2, 3, 4, ...]

However, I need to make it like this:

["1", "2", "3", "4", ...]

["1", "2", "3", "4", ...]

so basically strings in an array, or perhaps json like format, right? The questions is how to do that without a closure or multiple variables or foreach loop etc. Basically I need a one liner to be able to stick it in default() or other form field related parts, etc. I have tried

json_encode(
  DB::table('users')
      ->get()
      ->pluck('id')
)

json_encode(
  DB::table('users')
      ->get()
      ->pluck('id')
)

But the result is:

"[1, 2, 3, 4]"

"[1, 2, 3, 4]"

So, it encapsulate the whole array as a string instead of its elements. Any idea how to elegantly solve this problem? Can I perhaps cast somehow the pluck('id') into string during the get process? Or is there some trick how to do this easy?

7 Replies

awcodes•4mo ago

collect($array)->each(fn($item) => (string) $item)->toArray()

collect($array)->each(fn($item) => (string) $item)->toArray()

Not sure why it has to be a one liner though. 😀 Also don’t encode it.

Wirkhof•4mo ago

Thanks but:

collect(
    DB::table('users')
        ->get()
        ->pluck('id')
)->each(fn ($item) => (string) $item)->toArray()

collect(
    DB::table('users')
        ->get()
        ->pluck('id')
)->each(fn ($item) => (string) $item)->toArray()

still gives me an array of integers and not an array of strings. I have tried both dd() and to save it in the database and the result is still:

[1, 2, 3, 4, ...]

[1, 2, 3, 4, ...]

instead of

["1", "2", "3", "4", ...]

["1", "2", "3", "4", ...]

For example, I have noticed that the checkbox list method saves selected chckboxes, it's saved nicely as ["1","2","3",...] . How it is doing that?

awcodes•4mo ago

What are you trying to do, I would expect the checkbox list to handle it all when providing those as the options.

Wirkhof•4mo ago

I will probably try raw regex and put strings around each element. Which PHP regex function would be the best for this job?

awcodes•4mo ago

I think you’re probably over complicating this. That’s why I asked what your were actually trying to accomplish.

Wirkhof•4mo ago

In 1 column in the DB I have [1, 2, 3, 4, ...] and in other I have this ["1", "2", "3", "4", ...] and in other [1, 2, 3, 4, ...] so I always have to convert stuff. That's why I want strings and not integers for everything.

awcodes•4mo ago

Hmm. To me that points to a bigger underlying issue with your data structure / column casts.

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I need a one liner to get from this [1, 2, 3] to ["1", "2", "3"]