Laravel: Historical ranking system with ManyToMany relationship - php

Question

I would like to display a page where Users are listed by their Rank. A Rank can have multiple Users (for example, 2 Users can be at the 2nd place) and a User can have multiple Ranks too, because I would like to keep an historic of Users and Ranks through time.
Here's User.php
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
class User extends Authenticatable
{
// ...
public function Ranks() {
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Rank');
}
}
And Rank.php
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class Rank extends Model
{
public $timestamps = false;
public function Users() {
return $this->belongsToMany('App\User')->withPivot('created_at');
}
}
I also have a rank_user table in my database, with id, rank_id, user_id and created_at fields.
This is how I record it in database:
$user->ranks()->attach($rank_id, ['created_at' => Carbon::now()->addMinutes(105)]);
In order to list users by rank, and I mean at the current (most recent) rank, this is what I have:
$ranks = Rank::with('users')->get();
For example, for the 1st rank, it gives me all users who have been at the 1st place since the beginning instead of giving me all users who currently are at the first place.
I don't know how to limit the query to the most recent date.

Answer 1

I asked one of my friends and here is the solution we found:
I first have to get the most recent date contained into the rank_user pivot table.
$date = DB::table('rank_user')->select('created_at')
->orderBy('created_at', 'desc')
->first();
Then, I can use withPivot() to specify that I want results only for the most recent date we found earlier:
$ranks = Rank::with(['users' => function($query) use ($date) {
$query->wherePivot('created_at', $date->created_at);
}])->get();
And voilà ! In that way, I only get the most recent user(s) inside each rank.