Not sure what you are after but see if this post will help you any. http://laravel.io/forum/05-09-2015-clean-way-of-combining-an-array-for-a-listbox

im trying to get the column "user_no", "firstname", "lastname"

I use the setVisible trick. Not sure if it's a good idea

public function getemployee(){
        $id = $_POST['id'];
        $employees = mot_users::where("branch_no", $id)->get();
        foreach ($employees as $employee) {
            $employee->setVisible(['user_no', 'firstname', 'lastname']);
        }
        return response()->json(['success' => true, 'employees' => $employees]);
    }

I instead use this

$employees = mot_users::where("branch_no", $id)
    ->select(array('user_no', 'lastname', 'firstname'))
    ->get()->toArray();
 return response()->json(['success' => true, 'employees' => $employees]);

yet now im having a problem on fetching the json data response as it returns me

[Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object]

any ideas how to fetch that [object object] stuff?