Sort Eloquent Collection by created_at

Question

I have a table named 'posts' with the columns: 'post_id int primary increments', 'poster_id int' and 'status text' as well as an array named friends with the columns: 'user_id int primary' and 'friend_ids text'.

I need to grab all the IDs in the friends text column which is easy enough using:

$friends = explode(',', \Friend::where('user_id', \Sentry::getUser()->id)->first()->friend_ids); 

Where the data in the text column would look like '1,2,3,' etc.

Then I create an Eloquent Collection object which is also easily done via:

$posts = new \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection(); 

But the problem is I can't figure out how to populate the collection and sort its contents by the Post object's 'created_at' column.

This is what I have at the moment:

foreach ($friends as $id) {     $posts_ = \Post::where('poster_id', $id)->getQuery()         ->orderBy('created_at', 'desc')         ->get();     foreach($posts_ as $post) {         $posts->add($post);     } } 

I can't figure out if this code would work or not for sorting the entire collection of posts by the 'created_at' column. I would also need to be able to paginate the entire collection easily.

What is the recommended way of sorting the collection?

Answer 1

If you want to sort a collection you can use the sortBy method by given key

$sorted = $posts->sortBy('created_at'); 

Also you can apply a callback function on the collection

$sorted = $posts->sortBy(function($post) {   return $post->created_at; }); 

Hope this helps. For more information on collections you can read the docs

Answer 2

You don't need to loop through the $friends array, you can just use it together with whereIn like this

$posts = \Post::whereIn('poster_id', $friends)->latest()->get(); 

This replaces the empty collection creation and the foreach-loop, and gives you all your friends posts in one Collection sorted by created_at

(the latest function is a shortcut for orderBy('created_at', 'desc'))