Unique modifier for merged collection in Antlers

[lasseron]

Hi,

I have a collection of customer references which are tagged by multiple "countries" and "sectors" taxonomy terms.

My goal is to display 12 references that match the current site visitor country and segment. If there are less results, add more common global references.

Each reference can have multiple country and sector terms whcih may lead to duplicates in the combined array which I wish to handle.

My problem is that I can't get "unique" modifier to work. I have tried three aporaches which all failed:

{{ refs = { collection:references taxonomy:countries={country} taxonomy:sectors={sector} limit="12" } }}

{{ if refs | count < 12 }}
    {{ global_refs = { collection:references taxonomy:countries="all" taxonomy:sectors="all" limit="12" } }}
    {{# ATTEMPT 1: "unique" does not do anything here #}}
    {{ refs = { refs | merge:global_refs | unique:title | limit:12 } }}
{{ /if }}

{{# ATTEMPT 2: "unique" does not do anything here either #}}
{{ refs = { refs | unique:title } }}

<div class="row">
    {{# ATTEMPT 3: "unique" does indeed provide unique values but breaks up HTML by mysteriously wrapping DIV.row around each P #}}
    {{ refs | unique:title }}
          <p>{{ title }}</p>
    {{ /refs }}
</div>

Tried to get my head around it for about 12 hours stight, reading docs and using GPT but so far no luck.

Cheers, René

[edalzell]

Where did you get the unique:title syntax?

The proper syntax looks like it would be | unique('title').

[lasseron]

Re-read the docs at https://statamic.dev/antlers#modifiers and of course you are right!
The correct syntax should indeed be | unique('title')

However it does not work. This updated code still don't remove duplicates:

{{ refs = { refs | merge:global_refs | unique('title') | limit:12 } }}
{{ refs = { refs | unique('title') } }}

But then again by trial and error I found out that using syntax with '=' does remove duplicates when combined with 'merge':

{{ refs = { refs | merge:global_refs | unique='title' | limit:12 } }}

But does not work without 'merge':

{{ refs = { refs | unique='title' } }}`

In looping situation the '=' syntax doesn't do anything:

<div class="row">
    {{ refs | unique='title' }}
          <p>{{ title }}</p>
    {{ /refs }}
</div>

The documented version does remove duplicates but messes up the HTML similarly like in my initial post by looping div.row around each p element. How come..

<div class="row">
    {{ refs | unique='title' }}
          <p>{{ title }}</p>
    {{ /refs }}
</div>

So the whole thing remains a mystery to me.

In the end I just wrote an ugly PHP workaround:

{{? $refs = collect($refs)->unique(fn ($item) => $item['title'] instanceof \Statamic\Fields\Value ? $item['title']->value() : $item['title'])->values(); ?}}`