In this episode, we dive into how to get all the cases from a PHP enum, which comes in super handy when you need to build forms or dropdowns dynamically. Using our book status example, imagine you want a select input so users can pick the status of a book. Instead of hardcoding all your statuses in the form, we show how enums let you generate this list automatically.
We explore the cases method, which returns all your enum objects as an array. You can then loop over these and display them however you want—like as <option> tags in a form. The beauty here is when you add a new status to your enum, it automatically appears in your form everywhere you use this method, so your code stays DRY.
We also add a simple text() method to our enum that returns a user-friendly string for each status. This makes your forms look much better, since you can show readable names instead of enum constants. It's a flexible setup that means you don't have duplicate code all over the place if things change later.
So, by just using a built-in enum feature, you get an easy way to build up dynamic, maintainable dropdowns or lists based on the current enum values.