Order by pivot table field

public function events () {
    return $this->belongsToMany(Event::class)->orderBy('date', 'desc');
}

public function next_event() {
    return $this->events()->first();
}

Thank you for your answer! But unfortunately I still get the same error when I'm doing it like that. Maybe something wrong in my code elsewhere? Don't know if this is important: I'm on Laravel 5.2.36 currently.

Aside from the constraint issue, it seems to me you also need a where condition because if you just order by date ascending or descending, you'll just get the first item or last item in the list, not the 'next' upcoming event... which seems like it would be the most beneficial thing to retrieve. So you'd need a condition that says give me the first date that is greater than or equal to today.

The constraints though, need to be separate from the relationship. Try something like this:

public function events() {
  return $this->belongsToMany(Event::class);
}

public function next_event() {
  return $this->events()
    ->where('date', '>=', Carbon::now()->startOfDay())
    ->orderBy('date', 'asc')
    ->first();
}

That ought to work.

I'd use local query scopes for this, that would give you better control over your data.

public function events()
{
    return $this->belongsToMany(Event::class);
}

public function scopeFutureEvents($query)
{
    return $query->where('date', '>', Carbon::today())->orderBy('date', 'DESC');
}

public function nextEvent()
{
    return $this->futureEvents()->first();
}

Thank you all very much! Yes, @willvincent, you are absolutely right, I need to make a query as you told. I wasn't that far in my thinking ;)

I tried all the solutions ( I guess local scope is something I have to read about a little more in the docs to understand it completely ;) ) But I still have the error message:

BadMethodCallException in Builder.php line 2345:
Call to undefined method Illuminate\Database\Query\Builder::addEagerConstraints()

In my controller I try to get the items like this:

$articles = Item::with('next_event')->get();

I guess there's an error in this line?

For those who come from Google like myself, I finally found a way to make it work, you need to use dot notation with the name of the pivot table and the column you want:

        ->belongsToMany('App\Event')
        ->withPivot('my_pivot_column') // also show a custom pivot column
        ->orderBy('event_item.my_pivot_column'); // the column to order