Laravel eloquent, create collection based on Column value

Question

I have an example table like the following:

| id | is_new | cate |
| 0  |   1    | [5]  |
| 1  |   1    | [5]  |
| 2  |   1    | [7]  |
| 3  |   1    | [6]  |

After I call the following function

   $product = Products::where('is_new', 1)->get();

the collection has the following data structure

Collection {#1284 ▼
  #items: array:4 [▼
    0 => Products {#1285 ▶}
    1 => Products {#1286 ▶}
    2 => Products {#1287 ▶}
    3 => Products {#1288 ▶}
  ]
}

I can also return a list of category id through:

    $category = Category::where('type', 2)->pluck('id')->all();  

I wonder is there any good way to achieve following structure (or similar) based on cate. I can use brute force way to create it by looping through the $category then add to new collection manually, I think there is a better way to do it.

Collection {#1284 ▼
  #items: array:3 [▼
    5 => array:2 [▼
         0 => Products {#1285 ▶}
         1 => Products {#1286 ▶}
         ]
    6 => Products {#1287 ▶}    or  6 => array:1 [ 0 => Products {#1287 ▶} ]
    7 => Products {#1288 ▶}
  ]
}

Solution Update based on answer:

$product->groupBy(function($item) {
        return $item['cate'][0]; //because the entry is a list
    });

Answer 1

You should take a look at using something like groupBy to group your categories together. It can be done on a database level (assuming you have referential integrity ) with foreign keys. You'll also get a guarantee that what is returned is an array for each category, which will make things more consistent (you won't need to make a check for if it is an array or an instance of Products , then).

You might need to change your database layout if your categories are stored like arrays, but for this you should use an intermediary table - look at many to many relationships .