Laravel collection / blade - displaying unique rows

Wasn't quite sure how to formulate the question, so I hope it represents my issue.

What I want to achieve is, displaying on my website's dashboard, for each user a list of meals for the upcoming week.

And in this example it will be 3 meals a day.

My database for this looks like this:

$table->id();
$table->foreignId('user_id')->constrained('users');
$table->enum('day', ['monday', 'tuesday', 'wednesday', 'thursday', 'friday', 'saturday', 'sunday']);
$table->foreignId('meal_id')->nullable()->constrained('food_meals');
$table->enum('type', ['breakfast', 'lunch', 'dinner']);
$table->string('slug')->unique();
$table->timestamps();

I have a simple relation setup in my User model:

public function userMeals()
{
    return $this->hasMany(Meal::class);
}

And the data returned to my dashboard is this:

$meals = auth()->user()->userMeals()->get();

When looping over the data in my blade, I of course get each day displayed three times:

But what I want of course is this:

And in my database I store the data like this:

So 3 entries per day, based on the type of meal.

So basically my question is this. Can I have the data displayed in my blade file like I have on the second picture with this setup, so I can edit the data in my controller? Or is this bad design and should I go about it differently?

PS. When I do this for example, it works, but I can never display the initial data for the breakfast, lunch and dinner, because two entries for each day will be lost:

auth()->user()->userMeals()->get()->unique('day')

You can define an attribute method on your User.php model:

public function getMealsGroupedByDayAndTypeAttribute()
{
$grouped = [];
$days = ['monday', 'tuesday', 'wednesday', 'thursday', 'friday', 'saturday', 'sunday'];
$types = ['breakfast', 'lunch', 'dinner'];
foreach ($days as $day) {
foreach ($types as $type) {
$grouped[$day][$type] = $this->userMeals->where('day', $day)->where('type', $type)->first();
}
}
return $grouped;
}

An example output of auth()->user()->meals_grouped_by_day_and_type will be like this:

[
'monday' => [
'breakfast' => [
'id' => 1,
'user_id' => 1,
'day' => 'monday',
'type' => 'breakfast',
'meal_id' => 1,
'created_at' => '2021-05-04T20:00:00.000000Z',
'updated_at' => '2021-05-04T20:00:00.000000Z',
],
'lunch' => [
'id' => 2,
'user_id' => 1,
'day' => 'monday',
'type' => 'lunch',
'meal_id' => 2,
'created_at' => '2021-05-04T20:00:00.000000Z',
'updated_at' => '2021-05-04T20:00:00.000000Z',
],
'dinner' => [
'id' => 3,
'user_id' => 1,
'day' => 'monday',
'type' => 'dinner',
'meal_id' => 3,
'created_at' => '2021-05-04T20:00:00.000000Z',
'updated_at' => '2021-05-04T20:00:00.000000Z',
],
],
'tuesday' => [
'breakfast' => [
'id' => 4,
'user_id' => 1,
'day' => 'tuesday',
'type' => 'breakfast',
'meal_id' => 4,
'created_at' => '2021-05-04T20:00:00.000000Z',
'updated_at' => '2021-05-04T20:00:00.000000Z',
],
'lunch' => [
'id' => 5,
'user_id' => 1,
'day' => 'tuesday',
'type' => 'lunch',
'meal_id' => 5,
'created_at' => '2021-05-04T20:00:00.000000Z',
'updated_at' => '2021-05-04T20:00:00.000000Z',
],
'dinner' => [
'id' => 6,
'user_id' => 1,
'day' => 'tuesday',
'type' => 'dinner',
'meal_id' => 6,
'created_at' => '2021-05-04T20:00:00.000000Z',
'updated_at' => '2021-05-04T20:00:00.000000Z',
],
],
// ...
]

So you can loop through first level for days and types in that.

Or you can directly check if a meal type of a day exists and use it to fill select boxes

if(isset(auth()->user()->meals_grouped_by_day_and_type['monday']['lunch'])) { //... }

Please carefully check the code before use on production. This code always filters only first record of each days each type. For example if you have 2 records for day=='monday' and type='lunch' it will filter just the first one.

Also this codes uses $this->userMeals->where(..., not $this->userMeals()->where(.... It means model only queries the database for 1 time and loads it as a collection on $this->userMeals so where() and first() methods works on a Collection not on a QueryBuilder

If you use it with parentheses like $this->userMeals()->where(... it will create a new query for the database and won't be so efficient.