Alter existing database table column with Laravel 7 migration

Migration is powerful feature of laravel framework which is handling though it's own cli tool i.e. Artisan. It's a amazing feature to manage for version control of database. Now, we are going to elaborate some steps to alter a column in existing database table.

Step 1: Open Terminal

As we know for running cli command, we need to open a terminal.

Step 2 : Install migrations table

Migration is core feature of laravel but we need to install it by cli command.

php artisan migrate:install

when we run this command, it'll create migration repository in databse with two tables i.e. migrations and failed_jobs which will store all informations about future migrations.

Step 3 : Create migration

After installing migration, we are going generate a empty migration script.

php artisan migrate:make create_products

"create_products" is just a simple name for of understanding of migration script. You can update it too.

This command will create skeleton of migration at path i.e. [ROOT_OF_YOUR_APPLICATION]/database/migrations/ by adding timestamp in file name like 2020_18_02_213439_create_products.php

class Create_Products extends Migration {

	/**
	 * Make changes to the database.
	 *
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function up()
	{
		//
	}

	/**
	 * Revert the changes to the database.
	 *
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function down()
	{
		//
	}

}

Step 4: Create Table and add some database

After generating a skeleton of migration, we are going add some script to create a products table in database and insert some test data in products table.

class Create_Products extends Migration {

	/**
	 * Make changes to the database.
	 *
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function up()
	{
		Schema::create('products',function($table){
			$table->increments('id');
			$table->string('name', 20); 
			$table->string('description', 255); 
			$table->string('sku', 64); 
			$table->boolean('available');
			$table->timestamps(); 
		});
		
		DB::table('products')->insert(array(
					'name' => 'TEST PRODUCT 01',
					'string' => 'lorem ipsum text lorem ipsum text',
					'sku' => 'PRDCT8761',
					'available' => 1
		));
	}

	/**
	 * Revert the changes to the database.
	 *
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function down()
	{
		//
	}

Step 5 : Run Migration

In this step, we need to run migration for creating "products" table.

php artisan migrate

Now, we have created a table i.e. products in our database.

Note: If you already have existing table which you want alter by a column, you don't need to perform above mentioned Step 3 to Step 5.

Step 6 : Create Migration for alteration of a column

As mentioned above in "Step 3", we need to create a skeleton of migration of alteration of a column.

php artisan migrate:make update_products_by_available_type_change

This will create a skelton file like 2020_18_02_213439_update_products_by_available_type_change.php

Step 7 : Update alter script

class UpdateProductsByAvailableTypeChange extends Migration {

	/**
	 * Make changes to the database.
	 *
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function up()
	{
		DB::query("ALTER TABLE `testdb`.`products` CHANGE COLUMN `available` `available` tinyint(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT '1';");
	}

	/**
	 * Revert the changes to the database.
	 *
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function down()
	{
		//
	}
}

Step 8 : Run Migration

In this step, we need to run migration for adding our alteration script.

php artisan migrate

Now, we are done with alteration of a column in database table.