Laravel Collection's where() method allows you to easily filter items in a collection by specifying a key-value pair. It checks if the specified key has a value equal to the provided value. You can also use the optional $operator parameter to customize how the comparison is done. The where() method then gives you a new collection containing only the items that meet your criteria.

1. Create a new Laravel Project
2. Signature
3. Example 1
4. Output
5. Example 2
6. Output

Creating the Laravel app is not necessary for this step, but if you haven't done it yet, you can proceed by executing the following command

composer create-project laravel/laravel laravel_filtering

The signature of where() method in the Illuminate/Support/Collection class looks something like below.

**
 * Filter items by the given key value pair.
 *
 * @param  string  $key
 * @param  mixed  $operator
 * @param  mixed  $value
 * @return static
 */
public function where($key, $operator = null, $value = null)
{
    ...
}

Let's use the where method to narrow down our collection.

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\Access\AuthorizesRequests;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Validation\ValidatesRequests;
use Illuminate\Routing\Controller as BaseController;

class Controller extends BaseController
{
    use AuthorizesRequests, ValidatesRequests;


    public function index(){
        $collection = collect([
            [
                'name'      =>  'Luke Thomas',
                'job'       =>  'Marketing Manager',
                'salary'    =>  8000
            ],
            [
                'name'      =>  'Liam Coleman',
                'job'       =>  'Web Manager',
                'salary'    =>  7500
            ],
            [
                'name'      =>  'Jacob Hill',
                'job'       =>  'Web Developer',
                'salary'    =>  6500
            ],
            [
                'name'      =>  'Charles Brown',
                'job'       =>  'Web Developer',
                'salary'    =>  5000
            ],
            [
                'name'      =>  'Richard Wilson',
                'job'       =>  'Web Developer',
                'salary'    =>  5400
            ],
            [
                'name'      =>  'Isaac Kelly',
                'job'       =>  'Graphics Designer',
                'salary'    =>  6000
            ]
        ]);

        $filteredCollection = $collection->where('salary', '>', 6000);
        dd($filteredCollection);
    }
}

To find employees with salaries over $6000, we can filter the records using the where() method.

The above statement will return the response to something like below.

We're going to narrow down our original collection, $collection, to show only the employees who have the job title "web developer."

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\Access\AuthorizesRequests;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Validation\ValidatesRequests;
use Illuminate\Routing\Controller as BaseController;

class Controller extends BaseController
{
    use AuthorizesRequests, ValidatesRequests;


    public function index(){
        $collection = collect([
            [
                'name'      =>  'Luke Thomas',
                'job'       =>  'Marketing Manager',
                'salary'    =>  8000
            ],
            [
                'name'      =>  'Liam Coleman',
                'job'       =>  'Web Manager',
                'salary'    =>  7500
            ],
            [
                'name'      =>  'Jacob Hill',
                'job'       =>  'Web Developer',
                'salary'    =>  6500
            ],
            [
                'name'      =>  'Charles Brown',
                'job'       =>  'Web Developer',
                'salary'    =>  5000
            ],
            [
                'name'      =>  'Richard Wilson',
                'job'       =>  'Web Developer',
                'salary'    =>  5400
            ],
            [
                'name'      =>  'Isaac Kelly',
                'job'       =>  'Graphics Designer',
                'salary'    =>  6000
            ]
        ]);

        $filteredCollection = $collection->where('job', 'Web Developer');
        dd($filteredCollection);
    }
}

You will be presented with something like the below output.

You may have noticed that in the earlier examples, we initially used all three arguments: $key, $operator, and $value. However, as we proceeded, we only provided $key and $value. If we don’t provide any $operator Laravel will set the operator to =.

That's it for today. I hope it'll be helpful in upcoming project. You can also download this source code from GitHub. Thanks for reading. 🙂