Convert a collection into an Eloquent object

Question

Currently I'm using the Xero API inside Laravel 5.2. I would like to use the power of Eloquent with this data.

Actually I can recover invoices and even filter them using chaining methods as shown:

    $invoices = XeroPrivate::load('Accounting\\Invoice')
        ->where('Status', 'DRAFT')
        ->execute();

If I do a var_dump, I get this kind of data:

object(XeroPHP\Remote\Collection)[173]
  public 0 => 
    object(XeroPHP\Models\Accounting\Invoice)[171]
      protected '_data' => 
        array (size=31)
          'Type' => string 'ACCPAY' (length=6)
          'Contact' => 

Eloquent chaining methods would let me to execute things like this. Currently it fails:

    $invoices = XeroPrivate::load('Accounting\\Invoice')
        ->where('Date','>','2016-03-20')
        ->execute();

Checking Laravel's docs, it is supposed I could convert into a collection with collect:

    $collection = collect($invoices);

$collection does not solve the problem. Now data structure is different but still can't use Eloquent. Now data is:

object(Illuminate\Support\Collection)[163]
  protected 'items' => 
    array (size=24)
      0 => 
        object(XeroPHP\Models\Accounting\Invoice)[171]
          protected '_data' => 
            array (size=31)

But it is shown data is Illuminate\Support\Collection and seems to be right.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can take a single item of the collection by using first() method.

$entity = $collection->first();

You can find more information here about what methods you have available of Illuminate\Support\Collection.