How do you handle key-value data structures in Laravel Data?

[RasmusGodske]

Laravel-data has become my must-have to all of my Laravel projects and I use it all of the time. However during my time working on it, I have multiple times found myself, trying to find a way around storing key/values. So I wanted to ask here, if anyone have any experience with this.

The Situation

I often find myself needing data structures that are more like "maps" or "dictionaries" than arrays, where the key itself is meaningful and I want to access items by that key. Think things like:

{
  "settings": {
    "max_users": { "value": 100, "type": "integer" },
    "theme_color": { "value": "#ff0000", "type": "string" }
  }
}

Or:

{
  "metrics": {
    "revenue_growth": { "result": 15.2, "status": "success" },
    "user_retention": { "result": 87.5, "status": "success" }
  }
}

Where I need to efficiently look up by key, compare two such structures, and ensure they serialize consistently as JSON objects (not arrays).

My Questions

What do you all do in cases like this?

1. Do you use regular DataCollection and work around the array-like behavior?
2. Have you created custom collection classes?
3. Do you avoid this pattern altogether and structure your data differently?
4. How do you handle JSON serialization to ensure you get objects {} not arrays []?

I'm particularly curious about:

• Whether DataCollection works well for this, or if there are gotchas I should know about
• How you handle comparing/diffing two key-value structures
• Any patterns or helper methods you've built
• If this is even a good approach, or if there are better ways to model this kind of data

What I've Been Wondering

I keep second-guessing myself on whether I should:

• Try to make DataCollection work for this use case
• Create a wrapper/custom collection class
• Structure my data completely differently
• Use plain associative arrays and lose some of the Laravel Data benefits

Has anyone else wrestled with this? I feel like I might be overthinking it, but I also want to make sure I'm following good patterns.

Any insights, war stories, or "here's what I wish I'd known" would be super helpful!