title: Laravel 5.2 get the closest date from eloquent collection
body: <p>I have Eloquent Event model, which is related towards multiple dates like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$event-&gt;dates // shows Collection of 8 Eloquent date models
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>After that i need to pick the only date, what is closest to current time. I know how to do this using query of raw SQL, or DB class. But isnt there any better solution? I dont want to jump into database for data, I already have. </p>
  
  <p>Date format in eloquent models is surprisingly string.</p>