What does it should be when we call toArray()?

[RaulWei]

Suppose there is an object collection like that

people = {
  name: 'wei',
  sex: 'male',
  phone: [15211111111, 13511111111],
  company: {
    name: 'IBM',
    city: 'BJ'
  }
}

What does it should be if we call collect(people).toArray()?
In current implementation, it will return
[ 'wei', 'male', [ 15211111111, 13511111111 ], { name: 'IBM', city: 'BJ' } ].
Should it be [ 'wei', 'male', [ 15211111111, 13511111111 ], [ 'IBM', 'BJ' ] ]?

[g-plane]

I don't think [ 'wei', 'male', [ 15211111111, 13511111111 ], [ 'IBM', 'BJ' ] ] is consistent with Laravel.
For example (in Laravel 5.4):

$collect = collect([
    'name' => 'wei',
    'sex' => 'male',
    'phone' => [15211111111, 13511111111],
    'company' => ['name' => 'IBM', 'city' => 'BJ']
]);

return dd($collect->toArray());

The result is:

[ecrmnn]

It's not consistent with Laravel right now because in PHP have associative arrays, while JS don't.

I think it would be weird to return an object from a method called toArray(), but it would be consistent with Laravel.

What do you think? I'm open for a discussion

[solomonhawk]

It is my (random JS developer) opinion that the closest equivalent data structure in JS would be a nested array of [key, value] pairs. This is admittedly more awkward to work with than an object or real associative array. I wonder what the use case is for calling toArray() on an object wrapped in collect.

Input:

people = {
  name: 'wei',
  sex: 'male',
  phone: [15211111111, 13511111111],
  company: {
    name: 'IBM',
    city: 'BJ'
  }
}

Output:

[
  ['name', 'wei'],
  ['sex', 'male'],
  ['phone', [15211111111, 13511111111]],
  ['company', { name: 'IBM', city: 'BJ' }]
]

[wmj0cn]

dont see the usefulness of this method, would you like to give a real use scenario of it?

[faalotaiby]

In my opinion calling it ToArray is not useful, unless you needed an array, that says pass it to method which only accepted Integer() as a parameter.

[RaulWei]

Sorry for that I'm not familiar with Laravel, I propose this problem standing at the general position.