Laravel collection multi level groupBy insert new items without checking each level’s key

Laravel collections now have a great multi-level groupBy function built in, but I am struggling with a sensible way to insert new items.

For example:

$this->myCollection = EloquentModel::all()->groupBy(['key1','key2','key3','key4']);

Very nice, easy to set up and access. For this example, I will assume each key is a number

$this->myCollection[1][2][3][4] = new EloquentModel([insert => stuffHere]);

If there are already items in the nested positions [1], [2], and [3] then I can add a new item or overwrite the existing item at [4], but if any of the nested positions 1 through 3 is missing I get an error

Undefined offset: 1   (or 2 or 3 depending upon which is missing)

At the moment I am calling an insert into structure function with:

if (!$this->myCollection->has($1)) {
    $this->myCollection[$1] = new Collection;
}
if (!$this->myCollection[$1]->has($2)) {
    $this->myCollection[$1][$2] = new Collection;
}
if (!$this->myCollection[$1][$2]->has($3)) {
    $this->myCollection[$1][$2][$3] = new Collection;
}
$this->myCollection[$1][$2][$3][$4] = $itemFor4;

I find the groupBy nesting very useful, apart from not handling my inserts cleanly.

Some sample data – please assume there are > 100k records like this:

['username'=> 'a user name', 'course', => 'a coursename', 'activity_type' => 'one of 100s of activity names', 'reporting_week' => 23 // One of 52 weeks, [lots more data]]
['username'=> 'another user name', 'course', => 'another coursename', 'activity_type' => 'one of 100s of activity names', 'reporting_week' => 23 // One of 52 weeks, [lots more data]]
['username'=> 'a user name', 'course', => 'another coursename', 'activity_type' => 'one of 100s of activity names', 'reporting_week' => 24 // One of 52 weeks, [lots more data]]
['username'=> 'another user name', 'course', => 'a coursename', 'activity_type' => 'one of 100s of activity names', 'reporting_week' => 24 // One of 52 weeks, [lots more data]]

Instead of username and course in real life it would be a code representing that specific user and that course.

The data would include minutes of activity, counts of activity, grade of activity, how early or late the activity was etc.

Answer

I think you could extend the collection, adding a custom insertDeep function.

An idea:

Collection::macro('insertDeep', function (array $path, $value) {
    $key = array_shift($path);
   
    if (count($path) === 0) {
        $this->put($key, $value);
        return $this;
    }

    if (!$this->has($key)) {
        $this->put($key, new Collection());
    }

    return $this->get($key)->insertDeep($path, $value);
});

Then you could simply call this method on your collection:

$this->myCollection->insertDeep([$1, $2, $3, $4], $itemFor4);

I just tried it and it should work properly:

$coll = new Collection();
$coll->insertDeep(['a', 'b', 'c', 'd'], 'test');

$coll->toArray();
// Result
   [
     "a" => [
       "b" => [
         "c" => [
           "d" => "test",
         ],
       ],
     ],
   ]

Disclaimer: this function will fail if you specify a path where a key already exists but whose value is not a collection