View nested objects under Tinker - laravel

Question

On Laravel Tinker when I run this:
>>> $customers = App\Customer::all();
I get a list of objects such as:
=> Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection {#811
all: [
App\Customer {#815
id: 3,
favorite: 6,
user: App\User {#232 ...11},
zip: 11221
}
...
]
My question is how do I expand the user value where it has {#232 ...11}?

Answer 1

the tinker function of artisan is based almost entirely off of the psysh
see: https://github.com/bobthecow/psysh/
also: https://psysh.org/
inside psysh is a command called dump, dump is an implementation of symfony's var-dumper a newer kind of var_dump.
dump -h
shows:
Usage: dump [--depth DEPTH] [-a|--all] [--]
Arguments: target A target object or primitive to dump.
Options: --depth Depth to parse. (default: 10) --all (-a) Include
private and protected methods and properties.
Help: Dump an object or primitive. This is like var_dump but way
awesomer. e.g.
>>> dump $_
>>> dump $someVar
>>> dump $stuff->getAll()
for myself running with the argument --depth does not satisfy my object which is also rather large. so we see that psysh has a dependency on symfony's var-dumper.
see: https://github.com/symfony/var-dumper
also: https://symfony.com/doc/current/components/var_dumper.html
the advanced section states
The dump() function is just a thin wrapper and a more convenient way
to call VarDumper::dump(). You can change the behavior of this
function by calling VarDumper::setHandler($callable). Calls to dump()
will then be forwarded to $callable.
By adding a handler, you can customize the Cloners, Dumpers and
Casters...
A cloner is used to create an intermediate representation of any PHP
variable. Its output is a Symfony\Component\VarDumper\Cloner\Data
object that wraps this representation...
A cloner applies limits when creating the representation, so that one
can represent only a subset of the cloned variable. Before calling
cloneVar(), you can configure these limits:
setMaxItems()
Configures the maximum number of items that will be cloned past the minimum nesting depth. Items are counted using a breadth-first
algorithm so that lower level items have higher priority than deeply
nested items. Specifying -1 removes the limit. setMinDepth()
Configures the minimum tree depth where we are guaranteed to clone all the items. After this depth is reached, only setMaxItems items
will be cloned. The default value is 1, which is consistent with older
Symfony versions. setMaxString()
Configures the maximum number of characters that will be cloned before cutting overlong strings. Specifying -1 removes the limit.
see: https://symfony.com/doc/current/components/var_dumper/advanced.html
so what I am doing is creating a folder inside app named VarDumpFull then adding into file /app/VarDumpFull/VarDumpFull.php the following code
<?php
namespace App\VarDumpFull;
use Symfony\Component\VarDumper\Cloner\VarCloner;
use Symfony\Component\VarDumper\Dumper\CliDumper;
class VarDumpFull
{
public function __construct($var)
{
$cloner = new VarCloner();
$dumper = new CliDumper();
$cloner->setMaxItems(-1);
$cloner->setMaxString(-1);
$dumper->dump($cloner->cloneVar($var));
}
}
you can run this easily like so:
new VarDumpFull($variable_to_be_dumped);
remember to run to update your classes.
composer dump-autoload

Answer 2

You need to iterate over the collection to work with user property. If you want to do that in Tinker:
foreach ($customers as $customer) {
echo $customer->user->name;
}
If you just want to see the data structure, you can do this in Tinker:
$customers->first()->user

Answer 3

First of all you should load relationship:
$customers = App\Customer::with('user')->get();
but I assume you did it because you have user relationship visible on your output.
To get array representation of your customers together with relationships you should use:
foreach ($customers as $customer)
{
dump($customer->toArray());
}
obviously result won't be the same as you dump the whole collection but you will get all model attributes together with relations and I think this is what you want here.