Paginate json array in laravel - laravel-5

Question

I'm currently using Laravel 5.6 and I have a result from an api. I'm trying to paginate the results and I'm not able to do it.
My json result is like this:
{#922 ▼
+"orders": array:50 [▼
0 => {#220 ▶}
1 => {#234 ▶}
2 => {#250 ▶}
3 => {#263 ▶}
4 => {#274 ▶}
5 => {#297 ▶}
6 => {#310 ▶}
7 => {#322 ▶}
8 => {#338 ▶}
9 => {#351 ▶}
]
}
I then get orders and put into a variable like so: $orders = $call->orders;
I have attempted this:
$orders = $shopifyData->paginate(20)->toArray();
I get this error:
Call to a member function paginate() on array
I have also attempted this: $orders::Paginate(20);
Also doesn't work.
I think I'm missing the first step to how to do this but honestly I'm lost. I'm not really sure how to go about it. Googling has several examples on how to do it when you are using an Eloquent model to retrieve the data from a database. It also shows how to do it when you query a database but nothing. The laravel documentation found under 5.6 pagination:
Paginating Query Builder Results
Paginating Eloquent Results
Manually Creating A Paginator
is very limited and only says to use paginator or lengthAwarePginator and to use array_slice.
Can someone point me in the right direction of how to achieve this?

Answer 1

I assume you are trying to paginate a plain-old PHP array in Laravel way.
The paginate function is only for query builders, so it doesn't work for arrays.
To do what you want, you first need to know at which page the user viewing. Usually, the current page is passed via the page GET parameter, but Laravel's LengthAwarePaginator offers functionality to extract that. You will need a use for this to work.
use Illuminate\Pagination\LengthAwarePaginator; // don't forget to add this
....
$current_page = LengthAwarePaginator::resolveCurrentPage();
Then you need to slice the array containing the result. Set the $perPage variable accordingly. Then you either need:
to turn your array into a Collection and slice it
$orders = $call->orders;
$orders_collection = new Collection($orders); // needs a use statement
$orders_collection = collect($orders); // alternative. You can use helper function
$current_page_orders = $orders_collection->slice(($current_page - 1) * $perPage, $perPage)->all(); // slice($offset, $number_of_item)
or to use array_slice directly for your array.
$orders = $call->orders;
$current_page_orders = array_slice($orders, ($current_page - 1) * $perPage, $perPage);
$current_page_orders is still a (sliced) Collection or array, so let's create a paginator instance.
$orders_to_show = new LengthAwarePaginator($current_page_orders, count($orders_collection), $perPage);
$orders_to_show is now the paginated result you want. You should be able to use it just like you handle paginated results from your database.