Get latest message (row) per user in Laravel

Question

TL;DR: Need latest message from each sender.

In my Laravel application I have two tables:

Users:

• id
• name

Messages:

Answer 1

Maybe you can try this one:

        $user = \Auth::user(); 

        // Get the latest date
        $last_date_created = Message::latest()->first()->created_at; // also check for possible null

        // Get the date only - use to specify date range in the where section in the eloquent query
        $target_date = date('Y-m-d', strtotime( $last_date_created ) );

        // Retrieve the messages
        $latest_posts = Message::where('recipient_id', $user->id)
                               ->where('created_at', '>=', $target_date . ' 00:00:00')
                               ->where('created_at', '<=',  $target_date . ' 23:59:59')
                               ->groupBy('sender_id')
                               ->groupBy('created_at')
                               ->get();

        return $latest_posts;

This may not be very efficient since it took two queries to do the job but you will gain benefits thru code readability.

I hope it works the way it should be. I haven't tested it though but that's how I usually do this... Cheers!