Why Slash?

Think of Slash as PHP's answer to Lodash in JavaScript or Collections in Laravel — but simplified and framework-agnostic. It gives you expressive, chainable utilities without any heavy dependencies.

With slash(), you can do things like grouping, mapping, flattening, finding the max, or getting the last elements — all in one clean line of code.

Let’s dive into some real examples.

 Getting Started

Assuming you’ve already installed the Slash library (or autoloaded it via Composer), you can start using it like this:

slash()->map([1, 2, 3], fn($n) => $n * 2); 
// => [2, 4, 6]

The slash() function returns a utility object packed with helper methods.

groupBy

Let’s say you have a list of records with repeated IDs and you want to group them by id. Normally, that would require a foreach loop. But with Slash:

$records = [
    [ "id" => 1, "value1" => 5, "value2" => 10 ],
    [ "id" => 1, "value1" => 1, "value2" => 2 ],
    [ "id" => 2, "value1" => 50, "value2" => 100 ],
    [ "id" => 2, "value1" => 15, "value2" => 20 ],
    [ "id" => 3, "value1" => 15, "value2" => 20 ]
];

$grouped = slash()->groupBy($records, 'id');

/*
 * Result:
 * [
 *   1 => [ [...], [...] ],
 *   2 => [ [...], [...] ],
 *   3 => [ [...] ]
 * ]
 */

Easy, clean, and readable.

map

Need to transform an array? Use map:

slash()->map([1, 2, 3], fn ($n) => $n * 2); 
// => [2, 4, 6]

This works exactly like JavaScript’s Array.prototype.map.

 max

Quickly find the largest value in a dataset:

slash()->max([1, 2, 3]); 
// => 3

🪆 flatten

Working with nested arrays? flatten() handles any depth:

slash()->flatten([1, [2, [3]]]); 
// => [1, 2, 3]

No more array_merge gymnastics.

last

Get the last n elements from an array:

slash()->last([1, 2, 3], 2); 
// => [2, 3]

If you just want the final item:

slash()->last([1, 2, 3]); 
// => 3

 Conclusion

If you're tired of writing verbose code for simple operations, Slash is your new best friend. It’s compact, expressive, and gets out of your way — letting you write clean, readable PHP with modern flair.

Whether you're building a small utility script or a full-featured app, Slash can help you move faster and code cleaner.

📦 What’s Next?

We’re just scratching the surface. Future features could include:

• filter
• sum
• pluck
• sortBy
• Chaining support (slash()->collection($array)->map(...)->filter(...))

Your feedback helps — what would you like to see in the next version of Slash?