Die and dump arrayable: A helper function for dumping Eloquent models attributes

Laravel's dd() "die and dump" function is so simple, yet incredibly useful. I can't count the number of times I've used dd('here') when debugging. It's also great for dumping models and inspecting them in the frontend or console. In this post, we'll look at way to extend this feature for simpler output of Eloquent models.

dd() as it's normally used

If we have a $user variable representing an Eloquent model, then dd($user) will give an output such as the below.

App\Models\User {#1020 ▼
  #fillable: array:3 [▶]
  #hidden: array:2 [▶]  
  #casts: array:1 [▶]
  #connection: "mysql"
  #table: "users"
  #primaryKey: "id"
  #keyType: "int"
  +incrementing: true
  #with: []
  #withCount: []
  +preventsLazyLoading: false
  #perPage: 15
  +exists: true
  +wasRecentlyCreated: false
  #attributes: array:8 [▶]
  #original: array:8 [▶]
  #changes: []
  #classCastCache: []
  #dates: []
  #dateFormat: null
  #appends: []
  #dispatchesEvents: []
  #observables: []
  #relations: []
  #touches: []
  +timestamps: true
  #visible: []
  #guarded: array:1 [▶]
  #rememberTokenName: "remember_token"
}

This is great if you want to inspect the entire Eloquent object. But, sometimes you just want to see the attribute values, not the entire object itself. In these cases, we can simply use dd($user->toArray()), which will only dump the model's attributes.

array:6 [▼
  "id" => 1
  "name" => "Jarret Weber"
  "email" => "hkohler@example.net"
  "email_verified_at" => "2021-10-08T10:58:19.000000Z"
  "created_at" => "2021-10-08T10:58:19.000000Z"
  "updated_at" => "2021-10-08T10:58:19.000000Z"
]

But, instead of having to type dd($user->toArray()) every time, you can create a helper function that does that for you.

dda() - die and dump arrayable

To create this helper function, start by adding this helper file that will contain the new dda function. If you already have a customer helper file that's auto-loaded, you can place it there instead.

// app/Helpers.php
<?php

use Illuminate\Contracts\Support\Arrayable;
use Symfony\Component\VarDumper\VarDumper;

if (!function_exists('dda')) {
    // If the variable is `arrayable`, call the `toArray()` method
    // on it when dumping.
    function dda(...$vars)
    {
        foreach ($vars as $v) {
            $dump = $v instanceof Arrayable ? $v->toArray() : $v;
            VarDumper::dump($dump);
        }

        exit(1);
    }
}

Then, to ensure this file gets auto-loaded, add it to you composer.json file in the autoload-dev section.

"autoload-dev": {
    "files": [
        "app/Helpers.php"
    ]
}

Afterwards, run:

composer dump-autoload

That's it. You can now use dda($user), and it will work the same as calling the toArray() method on the $user object. What's more, you can still pass other variables to this function, and it will function just like the normal dd() method.