How to get last record of database table in Laravel?

Sometimes we may require to get only last record of table in our project, we can get several way. We can fetch last record of database table using latest() or orderBy(). In bellow example you can see how i get then last record of table.

I have "items" table and i want to get last record of "items" table. In first example i use latest() with first() because latest() will fetch only latest record according to created_at then first() will get only single record:

Using latest() belong to created_at field:

$last = DB::table('items')->latest()->first();

Now, In this example i used orderBy() that belong to id, it will always return max id record:

Using orderBy() belong to id field:

$last2 = DB::table('items')->orderBy('id', 'DESC')->first();

In this example latest() with argument, latest() will take created_at by default, if you want to give id then you can give argument as field name.

Using latest() belong to id field:

$last3 = DB::table('items')->latest('id')->first();

But If you want to get last inserted id then you have to follow this link :

How to get last inserted id in laravel 5?.