Add $collection->toDot(); method to transform the collection to the dotted notation.

[mikevandiepen]

At my company we are in need for this function, the ->undot() method already exists but the ->todot() method doesnt.
For now I use a macro but it would be nice to see it implemented.

My approach:

Collection::macro('toDot', function (): Collection {
    /* @var $this Collection taking the identical fqcn for later reconstruction, otherwise it might mess with custom collections */ 
    $collection = get_class($this);

    // Prefixing the keys of the array with an underscore, otherwise the keys will be lost and mapped to an chronological default order
    // possibly breaking the collection content for certain scenarios.
    $prepend = '_';

    return $collection
        ::make(Arr::dot($this, $prepend))
        ->mapWithKeys(function ($value, string $dottedKey) use ($prepend): array {
            return [
                substr($dottedKey, strlen($prepend)) => $value,
            ];
        });
});

[henzeb]

I'd call it dot and not toDot. Unfortunately, that method already exists: https://laravel.com/docs/10.x/collections#method-dot

[mikevandiepen]

Thanks, did not know about that collection method, we are using an older version of Laravel (for now) so that is not a solution yet. Looking at how its done it still has the flaw that it re-indexes numeric keys so for our use-case it is not a solution. But thats on us :)