[4.x]: Why eagerloading automatically returns collection ?

[jlachancekffein]

What happened?

Description

I'm not sure if it makes sense to return collections for each eagerloading item automatically.

I understand the relevance of being able to obtain collections via ->collect().

But I don't understand the reason to automate all this for eagerloader items.

Wouldn't it be more convenient to return an array if ->one() or ->all() is used for the query and collection if ->collect() is used.

If not, would it be feasible to configure via the config/general.php configuration file the expected return type for the eagerloading system. eg: 'eagerloading_return_type' => 'array|collection'?

Craft CMS version

4.0.0

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[brandonkelly]

The entire motivation for adding support for collections was so there could be a consistent way of working with eager-loaded elements and normally-queried elements – see #8513.

Wouldn't it be more convenient to return an array if ->one() or ->all() is used for the query and collection if ->collect() is used.

Convenient how? You can do all the same things with a collection that you can with an array; you just get some added benefits on top of that.