How to remove brackets and quote when displaying array results - Laravel

Question

I am new to Laravel & working on my first project. A small issue I am having is when I build a collection (array) and insert results into Laravel Form Select, and export to Excel, my results are wrapped in ["array"] brackets and quotes.

Code to build the collection:

                   $p3 = DB::table('players')
                       ->where ('id', $player3)
                       ->selectRaw('id, CONCAT(fname," ",lname) as full_name')
                       ->pluck('full_name', 'id');

                   $played['p'] .= $p3;

                   $p4 = DB::table('players')
                       ->where ('id', $player4)
                       ->selectRaw('id, CONCAT(fname," ",lname) as full_name')
                       ->pluck('full_name', 'id');

Note, there are 16 above (grabbing names from associated table)... I then build the collection:

$played = collect([$p1, $p2, $p3, $p4, $p5, $p6, $p7, $p8, $p9, $p10, $p11, $p12, $p13, $p14, $p15, $p16]);

and pass to view:

return view('grades.matchcard.edit', compact('data','data1', 'played', 'mid'));

As per image, the results are wrapped in brackets/quotes... Same when I export to Excel... I tried join & implode (get errors). Tried using

str_replace (kind of worked - but not great...

Any sugggestions would be greatly appreciated. thanks

Answer 1

Each of your DB queries generates a collection of one element, and then you collect those collections into your final $played variable. So iterating over it, each item is actually another collection. You want to flatten the collections, like so:

$played = collect([$p1, $p2, ...])->flatten();

BTW, I don't see the rest of your code but the chunk you've shown is quite inefficient, and might be better written:

$played = DB::table('players')
->whereIn('id', [$player3, $player4, $player5 .... all your ids ...])
->selectRaw('id, CONCAT(fname," ",lname) as full_name')
->pluck('full_name', 'id');

Here you are doing just one DB query, instead of many, and the query returns your collection, no need for further collecting and flattening. More info in the docs.

UPDATE to clarify based on comments:

The pluck() method above keys the resulting collection by the second parameter. So $played should be a collection of correctly matched id => full_name elements. To display the player with id 3's full name, you should be able to use $played[3].

BTW: do you have a Player model? If not, to do things the neat Laravel way you probably should, and it would make things a lot simpler. For eg:

In your model

Define an accessor, to make getting full name easier.

public function getFullNameAttribute($value) {
    return $value->fname . ' ' . $value->lname;
}

More info about accessors in the docs.

In your controller

$players = App\Player::find([$player3, $player4, $player5 .... all your ids ...]);
return view('whatever.your.view.is', ['players' => $players]);

More info about retrieving models in the docs.

In your view

<select>
@foreach ($players as $player)        
    <option value='{{ $player->id }}'>{{ $player->full_name }}</option>
</select>
@endforeach

If you want players to be listed in a particular order, you should either define that order in your model/database (eg a players.ranking field?), or, if the order is based on something derivable you could order it on the fly. Eg if you need them alphabetical you can add ->orderBy('lname') to the $players query in your controller.

Answer 2

try

$p4 = DB::table('players')
->where ('id', $player4)
->selectRaw('id, CONCAT(fname," ",lname) as full_name')
->get();

And in blade

{{$p4->id}}
{{$p4->full_name}}

EDIT

Sorry i didnt see the hole question

you can do something like this

$p4 = DB::table('players')
   ->where ('id', $player4)
   ->selectRaw('id, CONCAT(fname," ",lname) as full_name')
   ->get();

$played = new Collection();
$played.push($p4);

And in blade this should work

@foreach($played as $object)
    {{$object->id}}
    {{$object->full_name}}
@endforeach