Group array items with eloquent - laravel

Question

I have the following eloquent query:
$extras = EventExtra::select('id', 'category', 'name', 'price', 'description', 'company')->get();
It gets some data from me from my database. What i want is for the returned data to be grouped twice, first by the category and then second by the company so that in the end i have something like this returned to the client:
[
{
"name": "donation",
"collection": [
{
"name": "sampleCompany1",
"array": [
{
"name": "extra1",
"description": "",
"value": ""
},
{
"name": "extra4",
"description": "",
"value": ""
},
{
"name": "extra6",
"description": "",
"value": ""
}
]
}
]
},
{
"name": "donation",
"collection": [
{
"name": "sampleCompany2",
"array": [
{
"name": "extra2",
"description": "",
"value": ""
},
{
"name": "extra3",
"description": "",
"value": ""
}
]
}
]
}]
I just typed the above myself so it might not be valid object array but basically it shows what i want to accomplish here.

Answer 1

You can use Collection to build your custom object. Something like this:
$return_data = Collect();
To add items in the collection with a property, you can use the put function.
$inner_data->put('name',$extras->name);
You can also add a collection within a collection.
To just push an existing collection in the collection, use push function
$inner_data->push($some_collection)
EDIT: Since you want a working example, see this below:
Lets say you want to create the following using collection:
{
"name": "extra1"
"description": "",
"value": ""
}
You will do something like this:
$my_collection = Collect();
$my_collection->put('name','extra1');
$my_collection->put('description','');
$my_collection->put('value','');
Now you can add this collection to another collection where you don't need a key. So lets say now it looks like this:
[
{
"name": "extra1"
"description": "",
"value": ""
},
{
"name": "extra4"
"description": "",
"value": ""
}
]
You will now do:
$my_final_collection = Collect();
foreach($my_collections as $my_collection) {
$my_final_collection->push($my_collection); // and so on in a loop
}