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

I found this solution in another forum, I think that is what you were looking for. I post it so it can be useful for other users

        DB::select('
            SELECT t1.*
            FROM messages AS t1
            INNER JOIN
            (
                SELECT
                    LEAST(sender_id, recipient_id) AS user_id,
                    GREATEST(sender_id, recipient_id) AS recipient_id,
                    MAX(id) AS max_id
                FROM messages
                GROUP BY
                    LEAST(sender_id, recipient_id),
                    GREATEST(sender_id, recipient_id)
            ) AS t2
                ON LEAST(t1.sender_id, t1.recipient_id) = t2.sender_id AND
                   GREATEST(t1.sender_id, t1.recipient_id) = t2.recipient_id AND
                   t1.id = t2.max_id
                WHERE t1.sender_id = ? OR t1.recipient_id = ?
            ', [auth()->guard('api')->user()->id, auth()->guard('api')->user()->id]);

original post: https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/laravel/get-the-latest-message-of-chat-model-with-mysql-just-cannot-get-the-idea-how-to-do-this?page=1#reply=392529

Answer 2

Why not simply accessing the messages, like this -

// get the authenticated user
$user = \Auth::user(); 

// find the messages for that user
return User::with('message')->find($user->id)->messages;

Answer 3

this may be a solution (not tested though)

User::with([
'messages' => function ($q) {
    $q->select('sender_id', 'body')->groupBy('sender_id')->orderBy('created_at', 'desc');
}
])->find(1);

Answer 4

I like a simpler approach which is mentioned here.

In your User model additionally to existing messages() relationship, add this relationship

public function latestMessage() 
{
    return $this->hasOne(Message::class, 'recipient_id')->latest();
}

Then when you query simply query like this.

$messages = User::with('latestMessage')->get();

$messages contains latest message per user.

Edit

In order to order the result by datetime/id you could do it like this.

$messages = User::with(['latestMessage' => function($message) {
    $message->orderBy('id', 'desc');
}])->get();

$messages contains latest message per user ordered by id. Refer this answer

Answer 5

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!

Answer 6

You can try this one

Messages::where('recipient_id',**{USER_ID}**)
          ->group_by('sender_id')
          ->order_by('id','desc')
          ->get();