[5.1] Return Collection From Query Builder

[GrahamCampbell]

This is a really nice feature. The collection class is one of the best things in Laravel! It is also a boon for consistency.

This one does not touch the getModels method, or anything that has to do with relations or eager loading. In fact, it doesn't touch anything Eloquent related, so it's much safer.

We also now have the integration tests, which really helps.

Replaces #7213.

[taylorotwell]

Conflicts?

[JosephSilber]

@taylorotwell rebased.

[GrahamCampbell]

Looks pretty nice. 👍

[JosephSilber]

@GrahamCampbell out of curiosity: how did you originally move this PR that was targeted at 5.0 to master?

[RomainLanz]

He just create a new PR with your branch across all fork and target master.

[GrahamCampbell]

Yeh, anyone can create a pull to and from any repo on github. They don't need any special permissions. :)

[taylorotwell]

Want to hold off on this as I want to minimize breaking changes in 5.1 and it is rather trivial to just collect your DB results if you want a collection of them.

[GrahamCampbell]

:(