Eloquent collection returned json

Question

How is that possible ? Le's say that in a controller we have something like :

 $something = Something:all();

If I just return $something, an json object is returned with content of table {id:1, title :'etc'}

However if I die dump dd($something), I can see $something is an entire collection.

So the return is not returning the collection, is returning json object...?

Answer 1

This is the magic of Laravel, when you return the collection it convert it to jsonautomatically, this is an advantage for building an api.

Note that when a model or collection is cast to a string, it will be converted to JSON, meaning you can return Eloquent objects directly from your application's routes!

Check Laravel Documentation (Converting A Model To JSON).

Answer 2

Well, in addition to @Sheikh Heera answer, such conversion happens in the Illuminate\Http\Resonse class here, by checking if the response content is "JSONable", which is true for Illuminate\Support\Collection which Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection inherits from.