Maximizing Performance: Calculating Shopping Cart Subtotals with Laravel’s Collect Method

Calculating the subtotal of a product is an important aspect of eCommerce applications. In Laravel, there are various ways to achieve this. In this article, we will discuss two methods: a less efficient way and an efficient way of calculating the subtotal of a shopping cart.

Firstly, Using a for loop is One way to calculate the subtotal of a shopping cart in Laravel is by using a for loop. The for loop iterates through the shopping cart array and calculates the subtotal by multiplying the price and quantity of each item and adding it to the subtotal variable. Here is an example of how to implement this:

$subtotal = 0;
foreach ($cartArray as $item) {
    $subtotal += $item['price'] * $item['qty'];
}

The above method is less efficient as it requires more lines of code and is slower for larger shopping carts. It is also less readable and harder to understand.

Secondly, Using the collect() method The more efficient way to calculate the subtotal of a shopping cart in Laravel is by using the collect() method. The collect() method creates a new collection instance from the shopping cart array. We can then use the sum() method on the collection instance to calculate the total sum of the products in the cart. Here is an example:php

$subtotal = collect($cartArray)->sum(function ($item) {
    return $item['price'] * $item['qty'];
});

In the above example, we pass the shopping cart array to the collect() method. The sum() method takes a closure as its parameter, which calculates the product of the item’s price and quantity and returns the result. The sum() method then adds up all the values returned by the closure to get the total sum.

This method is very efficient, suitable for all sizes of shopping carts, and is easy to understand. It is also more readable than the for loop method.

Calculating the subtotal of a shopping cart is a crucial operation in eCommerce applications. While there are various ways to achieve this in Laravel, the collect() method is the more efficient and readable method. It is suitable for all sizes of shopping carts and is easy to understand. Other methods, such as using a for loop, are less efficient and should be avoided if possible. As software engineers, it is important to choose the most efficient and readable solution for a given problem.