Add daily email for 2025-03-29

Dependency-free PHP Collections

source/_daily_emails/2025-03-29.md

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+---
+title: Dependency-free PHP Collections
+date: 2025-03-29
+permalink: daily/2025/03/29/collections
+tags:
+  - software-development
+  - php
+  - collections
+cta: ~
+snippet: |
+  How to write Collection classes in PHP with no dependencies.
+---
+
+A few months ago, [Beyond Blocks podcast guest Dan Leech][5] give another talk at the PHP South West user group.
+
+This talk was about [building an expression language from scratch][4], but in one part of the talk, Dan showed how he creates Collection classes.
+
+I use Collection classes a lot, have [given talks about them][1] and [wrote a Collections module for Drupal 7][2].
+
+In Dan's talk, instead of using a Collection from Laravel or Doctrine, [he created his own][3].
+
+His extended PHP's `IteratorAggregate` class so had no external dependencies.
+
+He could then add whatever additional methods and functionality he needed.
+
+Looking at other repositories on GitHub, I was able to find other examples.
+
+I've done this on projects since Dan's talk and like taking the minimalist approach - avoiding adding a dependency to my project and only adding the functionality I need and functionality that's more specific to my domain.
+
+[1]: {{site.url}}/presentations/using-illuminate-collections-outside-laravel
+[2]: https://www.drupal.org/project/collection_class
+[3]: https://github.com/dantleech/onehourexpr/blob/8c4ee4a3c1680455118e16a3e1be2a08418ab207/src/Tokens.php
+[4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpyVAcWGQhg
+[5]: {{site.url}}/podcast/6-dan-leech-php-tui