NestableCollection

A Laravel package that extends Eloquent collections to handle nested items following the adjacency list model.

Requirements

PHP ^8.3
Laravel 12 or 13

Installation

composer require typicms/nestablecollection

Usage

The model must have a parent_id attribute:

protected $fillable = [
    'parent_id',
    // …
];

and must use the NestableTrait:

use TypiCMS\NestableTrait;

class Category extends Model
{
    use NestableTrait;
}

Now each time you retrieve a collection of that model, it will be an instance of TypiCMS\NestableCollection instead of Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection.

To get a tree of models, call the nest() method on a collection ordered by parent_id:

Category::orderBy('parent_id')->get()->nest();

You will probably want a position column as well, so order first by parent_id then by position:

Category::orderBy('parent_id')->orderBy('position')->get()->nest();

Custom parent column

By default, the parent column is parent_id. You can change it with the parentColumn() method:

$collection->parentColumn('category_id')->nest();

Custom children name

By default, subcollections are named items. You can change it with the childrenName() method:

$collection->childrenName('children')->nest();

Indented and flattened list

The listsFlattened() method generates the tree as a flattened list with id as keys and title as values, perfect for select/option elements:

[
    22 => 'Item 1 Title',
    10 => '    Child 1 Title',
    17 => '    Child 2 Title',
    14 => 'Item 2 Title',
]

First call nest(), then listsFlattened():

Category::orderBy('parent_id')->get()->nest()->listsFlattened();

By default it looks for a title column. Pass a custom column name as the first parameter:

$collection->nest()->listsFlattened('name');

Four spaces are used to indent by default. Use setIndent() to customize:

$collection->nest()->setIndent('> ')->listsFlattened();

Result:

[
    22 => 'Item 1 Title',
    10 => '> Child 1 Title',
    17 => '> Child 2 Title',
    14 => 'Item 2 Title',
]

Fully qualified flattened list

The listsFlattenedQualified() method builds full paths instead of indentation:

$collection->nest()->setIndent(' / ')->listsFlattenedQualified();

Result:

[
    22 => 'Item 1 Title',
    10 => 'Item 1 Title / Child 1 Title',
    17 => 'Item 1 Title / Child 2 Title',
    14 => 'Item 2 Title',
]

Setting parent relations

The setParents() method sets the parent relation on each nested item, so you can traverse up the tree without querying the database:

$nested = Category::orderBy('parent_id')->get()->nest()->setParents();

$nested[0]->items[0]->parent; // Returns the parent model

Nesting a subtree

By default, items with a missing ancestor are removed. To nest a branch of a tree, use the noCleaning() method:

Category::orderBy('parent_id')->get()->noCleaning()->nest();

Testing

composer require pestphp/pest --dev
vendor/bin/pest

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.

Nestablecollection Laravel Package