How to sort through two merged collections that have different models - laravel

Question

I have two models Cities and States. One City has 1 State and one State can have 0 or more Cities. I need to retrieve all Cities and States separately because I need to display states even if a state has no related cities (like Alabama in the below example). The issue is I need to sort by State name first, and than by Cities in that state (if there are any)
Cities
id, state_id, name
1, 1, San Diego
2, 1, Hollywood
3, 2, Seattle
4, 3, Pheonix
States
id, name
1, California
2, Washington
3, Arizona
4, Alabama
Controller:
$cities = Cities::with('state')->get(); // Returns the state relationship
$states = States::get();
$merged = $states->merge($cities);
I would now like to sort by State name first, and then all the cities in that State and return a merged collection similar to this:
{
id: 4,
name: Alabama,
},
{
id: 3,
name: Arizona,
},
{
id: 3,
name: Pheonix,
state_id: 3
state: {
id: 3,
name: Arizona
}
},
{
id: 1,
name: California
},
{
id: 2,
name: Hollywood
state_id: 1,
state: {
id: 1,
name: California
}
},
{
id: 1,
name: San Diego,
state_id: 1,
state: {
id: 1,
name: California
}
},
{
id: 2,
name: Washington,
},
{
id: 2,
name: Seattle,
state_id: 2,
state: {
id: 2,
name: Washington
}
}

Answer 1

I think you could do a query like this:
$states = State::all()->sortBy('name'); // Here your sort by the state name first
If you made the relations right you can access the cities from each state like this: (you dont need to merge collections):
#foreach($states as $state) // this will sort the cities by id
{{$state->cities}}
#endforeach
To sort them by the name you could try this:
#foreach($states as $state)
{{$state->cities->sortBy('name')}}
#endforeach