Removing Collection Items with Laravel's forget Method

Need to remove items from a collection? Laravel's forget method offers a straightforward way to remove elements by their keys while modifying the original collection.

Basic Usage

Remove items by their keys:

$collection = collect(['name' => 'taylor', 'framework' => 'laravel']);

// Remove a single key
$collection->forget('name');
// Result: ['framework' => 'laravel']

// Remove multiple keys
$collection->forget(['name', 'framework']);
// Result: []

Real-World Example

Here's how you might use it in a user preferences manager:

class PreferencesManager
{
    protected $preferences;

    public function __construct(array $preferences)
    {
        $this->preferences = collect($preferences);
    }

    public function resetToDefault(string|array $keys)
    {
        // Directly modifies the preferences collection
        $this->preferences->forget($keys);
        
        return $this;
    }

    public function cleanupTemporarySettings()
    {
        $temporaryKeys = ['temp_theme', 'session_view', 'cache_key'];
        
        $this->preferences->forget($temporaryKeys);
        
        return $this;
    }

    public function removeOutdatedFlags(array $flags)
    {
        // Remove specific feature flags
        $this->preferences
            ->forget(
                collect($flags)
                    ->map(fn($flag) => "feature_flag.{$flag}")
                    ->all()
            );
            
        return $this;
    }
}

// Usage
$manager = new PreferencesManager([
    'theme' => 'dark',
    'notifications' => true,
    'temp_theme' => 'light',
    'feature_flag.beta' => true
]);

$manager->cleanupTemporarySettings()
        ->removeOutdatedFlags(['beta']);

Unlike other collection methods, forget modifies the original collection, making it perfect for direct data manipulation.

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