You should consider overriding the toArray() method in your collection class. It should be pretty easy to implement.

<?php namespace Extensions;

class CustomCollection extends \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection {
    public function toArray()
    {
        // ...Your own implementation...
    }
}

class Icons extends Eloquent {
    // Override the parent method
    public function newCollection(array $models = Array())
    {
        return new Extensions\CustomCollection($models);
    }
}

arjan said:

You can do:

Icon::all()->keyBy('name')

or

Icon::all()->keyBy('name')->toArray()

Perfect!