# Lazy Collections in Laravel

What are Lazy Collections in Laravel?

Lazy Collections in Laravel provide a memory-efficient way to work with large datasets by processing data one item at a time. They are especially useful for handling streams of data or iterating over large Eloquent queries without loading everything into memory.

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## Origin

Lazy Collections were introduced in Laravel 6, leveraging PHP Generators to enable on-demand processing of data, reducing memory usage in high-load scenarios.

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## Why are Lazy Collections Used?

1. **Memory Efficiency**: Reduces memory consumption by processing data incrementally.
2. **Handles Large Datasets**: Works seamlessly with large datasets that cannot fit into memory.
3. **Improves Performance**: Minimizes the overhead of loading unnecessary data.

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## Best Practices

1. **Use for Large Queries**: Apply lazy collections to Eloquent queries with thousands of records.
2. **Combine with Generators**: Write custom generators to produce data streams.
3. **Avoid Complex Transformations**: Keep operations lightweight to maintain efficiency.

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## Example in Action

Using Lazy Collections to process a large dataset:

```php
use Illuminate\Support\LazyCollection;

LazyCollection::make(function () {
    for ($i = 0; $i < 1000000; $i++) {
        yield $i;
    }
})->each(function ($value) {
    echo $value;
});
```

Lazy Collections with Eloquent:

```php
User::cursor()->each(function ($user) {
    echo $user->name;
});
```

Read this definition in a browser: https://ranetrace.com/glossary/lazy-collections-in-laravel