Preserving Collection Keys in Laravel API Resources

Laravel renumbers the index of the resource collection by default when building an API. For situations where the original key has meaning, the preserveKeys attribute maintains the expected data structure.

Here is an example of how to use this property in a Laravel application:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Resources;

use Illuminate\Http\Resources\Json\JsonResource;

class KeyValueResource extends JsonResource
{
    public $preserveKeys = true;

    public function toArray($request)
    {
        return [
            'value' => $this->value,
            'updated_at' => $this->updated_at,
            'metadata' => $this->metadata
        ];
    }
}

Another example:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Models\Setting;
use App\Http\Resources\SettingResource;

class SettingController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        $settings = Setting::all()->keyBy('key');

        return SettingResource::collection($settings);
    }
}

class SettingResource extends JsonResource
{
    public $preserveKeys = true;

    public function toArray($request)
    {
        return [
            'value' => $this->formatValue(),
            'type' => $this->type,
            'last_updated' => $this->updated_at->toDateTimeString(),
            'editable' => $this->is_editable
        ];
    }
}

This will return a response like this:

{
    "data": {
        "app_name": {
            "value": "My Application",
            "type": "string",
            "last_updated": "2024-03-15 10:30:00",
            "editable": true
        },
        "max_upload_size": {
            "value": 10485760,
            "type": "integer",
            "last_updated": "2024-03-15 10:30:00",
            "editable": true
        }
    }
}

preserveKeys $preserveKeys = true

The property ensures that meaningful keys are retained in the API response, which is especially important for configuring data and key-value structures. By setting , the Laravel resource collection retains its original key instead of using the default numeric index.

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