Utilities.md

Utilities

Inspired by such libraries as Laravel "helpers" or even Underscore.js, there are now several utility classes in cicbase that serve simple, but useful, purposes. The classes are in CIC\Utility. Take a gander at what we’ve got. The methods are all static and well-commented. These are also (or should be) very well tested so use these utilities with confidence and build great code!

Here are some of my favorites:

Arr::safe and Arr::safePath

A lot of times you don’t care whether a variable is set or not, but you need the value if it’s there. To avoid getting any warnings, you better use isset():

if (isset($arr[$maybeIndex]) && $arr[$maybeIndex] == ‘foo’) {
  $this->runAway();
}

But a nicer way to do this is just:

if (Arr::safe($arr, $maybeIndex) == ‘foo’) {
  $this->runAway();
}

I know it’s not going to send us to the moon, but it certainly cleans up yer codes.

This also works recursively:

$arr = ['I' => ['1' => ['a' => 'this chapter...']]];
$firstChapter = Arr::safe($arr, ['I','1','a']);

Or simply:

$firstChapter = Arr::safePath($arr, 'I.1.a');

If you've written a lot of PHP, you'll understand that this is way more convenient than using isset.

Arr::column

Another handy method is Arr::column. It's a modified version of PHP's standad array_column function, but a little more flexible. Using it, you can take a collection of database rows and index them by UID or by a title column or something. This makes working with complex array structures a little simpler. It does more than this, so read the comments and figure it out.

Arr::describe and Arr::describeKeys

Comparing 2 arrays in PHP is 1) not hard and 2) needed often. These methods provide an effective way to get a quick rundown of how 2 arrays compare.

Str::pluralize

Sometimes you need to render a string like X coconuts or X coconut and which version depends on whether X equals 1.

$x = 1
$str = $x . ' ' . Str::pluralize($x, 'coconut'); // "1 coconut"
$x = 11
$str = $x . ' ' . Str::pluralize($x, 'coconut'); // "11 coconuts"
$x = 111
$str = $x . ' ' . Str::pluralize($x, 'child'); // "111 children"

More!

There’re a ton of goodies in the utility classes and you should add more.

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