double nested arrays

[luckydonald]

I have to support the following json array:

$rules = [
  'items' => 'array',
  'items.*' => 'array',
  'items.*.*.name' => 'string',
  // more stuff an item has
];

For example it would look like that in Json:

{
"items": {
   "salty": {
     "meat": {"name": "Beef Jerky"},
     "plant": {"name": "Sea Weed"},
   },
  "sweet": {
     "fruit": {"name": "Banana"},
     "dessert": {"name": "Mousse au Chocolat"}
   }
}

I made a class Item for that {"name": "…"} part, and a class Outer for the overall object.

Now I need to define Outer and tell it that I want to have Item[][] as the $items variable:

I tried to use DataCollectionOf twice, but that doesn't seem to work:

<?php

namespace App\Data;

use Spatie\LaravelData\Attributes\DataCollectionOf;

readonly class Outer
{
    public function __construct(
        #[DataCollectionOf(are DataCollectionOf(Item::class))]
        public array $items,  // How do I tell this I want `Item[][]`, both having string keys
    )
    {
    }
}

This results in the following error:

Expected parameter of type 'string', '\Spatie\LaravelData\Attributes\DataCollectionOf' provided 

[rubenvanassche]

Hmm I don't see how we can support this. Every layer needs a data object so you could have Item and ParentItem? Other solution could be to implement a custom cast.