As a developer, we often times deal with massive amount of nested relations and multi-dimensional arrays. Which also means from time to time we get hounded by some unexpected `Undefined index` or `Trying to get property of a non-object` errors. For me, I often times experience this when I'm working on generating excel reports. So let me give you some real world (almost) examples.. ## Situation... Let's say we are creating an export excel report functionality for a helpdesk ticketing app. We have a `$ticket` model that has an `id` field. It belongs to an `$approver` model that has a `full_name` field. So when we plot on excel sheet we want to know who is the approver of the ticket. Somewhere in our code we will have something like: ``` // Assume that the array keys are the excel headings.. return [ 'ticket_id' => $ticket->id, 'approver' => $ticket->approver->full_name, ]; ``` At first this looks all good. However, if the **ticket has not yet been approved** `$ticket->approver` will result to `null`. And since you are basically doing `null->full_name` you'll get the really nasty error of `Trying to get property 'full_name' of non-object`. In reality, if `$ticket->approver` is null, we want it to just return `null` so the excel cell can be empty and not worry about any error. ## optional(...) to the rescue!? Yes! The magical `optional(...)` helper function can help here. So we can just say: ``` return [ 'ticket_id' => $ticket->id, 'approver' => optional($ticket->approver)->full_name, ]; ``` This looks quite okay already. You submit a PR and what a productive day it is, right? But then your client decided to add another caveat. Now `$approver` model belongs to a `$company` model that has a `name` field in it, and your client wants that added on the excel sheet too. No problem! ``` return [ 'ticket_id' => $ticket->id, 'approver' => optional($ticket->approver)->full_name, 'approver_company' => optional($ticket->approver)->company->name, ]; ``` However, if for some reason `$company` is not present from the approver model then we'd be back to that nasty error again. Okay so we can just wrap it in another `optional(...)` right? Well, we can do that... but it does not look clean... and there is a better solution. ## Arr::get(...) If you are not yet familiar with what this helper does, take a look at the [official documentation here!](https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/helpers#method-array-get). Let's go ahead and change our implementation: ``` use Illuminate\Support\Arr; ... return [ 'ticket_id' => Arr::get($ticket, 'id'), // Apply here as well so it looks uniform :) 'approver' => Arr::get($ticket, 'approver.full_name'), 'approver_company' => Arr::get($ticket, 'approver.company.name'), ]; ``` Now if either `$approver` or `$company` model is not set, we do not have to worry about the nasty error. And it works seamlessly on multi-level nesting too. Note: Obviously, the implementation will not work if the inner relation is a `Collection`. That's a totally different approach when plotting on an excel cell.