Laravel eloquent whereHas where first date is after a specific date - laravel

Question

I have two related tables:
publications:
| id | name |
| 1 | Test |
| 2 | Example |
publication_dates:
| id | publication_id | date |
| 1 | 1 | 2020-02-01 |
| 2 | 1 | 2020-02-10 |
| 3 | 1 | 2020-01-25 |
| 4 | 2 | 2020-01-10 |
| 5 | 2 | 2019-12-15 |
Now for example I would like to get all publications where the first date of publication_dates is after 2020-01-01. So I tried the following:
$publications = Publication::whereHas('dates', function($query) {
$query->whereRaw("MIN(date) > '2020-01-10'");
});
But this returns the following error:
SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1111 Invalid use of group function
which revers to MIN(date). So my question remains how can I get all publications with the first date being after 2020-01-01 or any other specific date. From the example above I would expect to get the publication with id 1 since the first date of 2 is 2019-12-15

Answer 1

You should reverse querying logic and then you can use relationship absence.
use Carbon\Carbon;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder;
$date = Carbon::create('2020-01-10');
$publications = Publication::whereDoesntHave('dates', function(Builder $query) use ($date) {
$query->where('date', '<', $date->toDateString());
});
You can also go further and make local scope method for query builder in model
// Publication model
/**
* Scope a query to only include publications that has date newer than $date
*
* #param \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder $query
* #param string|object Carbon $date
* #return \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder
*/
public function scopeDatesNewerThan($query, Carbon $date)
{
return $query->whereDoesntHave('dates', function(Builder $query) use ($date) {
$query->where('date', '<', $date->toDateString());// or set '<=' if more appropriate
});
}
Then somewhere in code i.e. newer than last 30 days
// $publications = Publication::datesNewerThan(Carbon::now()->subDays(30))->get();

Answer 2

I assume the error is because you are using an aggregate function without a proper group by clause, You could use a join to tackle this. but here is a slightly different approach using the subquery join.
$firstDates = PublicationDate::groupBy('publication_id')
->selectRaw('publication_id, MIN(date) as first_date'); // assuming you have a model called PublicationDate for the publication_dates table
Publication::joinSub($firstDates, 'first_dates', function($join){
$join->on('first_dates.publication_id', '=', 'publications.id')
->where('first_date', '>','2020-01-10');
})->get();