How to add a new column to an existing table via Laravel migration

Sometimes we need to add a new column or update an existing one to an existing table in the database after the migration. it’s so easy to do, we will add a new column and rename and change the data type of another one. let’s get started.

Let’s say we have a posts table that contains id, title, and description columns

 public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->id();
            $table->string('title');
            $table->text('description');
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }

We need to do three actions on that table, we need to add a new column for authors and we need to update the title to change the data type from string to text and rename the title ‘name’ to be ‘name’.

Adding a new column via laravel migration.

Let’s create the migration for adding the author column for posts

 php artisan make:migration adding_author_to_posts --table=posts

In our new file in database\migrations folder add the following codes

<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class AddingAuthorToPosts extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::table('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->string('author');
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::table('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->dropColumn('author');
        });
    }
}

And run php artisan migrate command

php artisan migrate

Now we added the new author column to our posts table.

Renaming an exsiting column via laravel migration

The next action is to rename the existing column from ‘title’ to name.

php artisan make:migration update_title_in_posts --table=posts

Let’s modify the new file in database\migrations

<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class UpdateTitleInPosts extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::table('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->renameColumn('title', 'name')->change();
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::table('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->dropColumn('name');
        });
    }
}

and run the migration

php artisan migrate

Change the data type of an existing column via laravel migration

let’s change the ‘name’ colume data type from string to text

php artisan make:migration update_name_in_posts --table=posts 

In the new migration file

<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class UpdateNameInPosts extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::table('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->text('name')->change();
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::table('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->dropColumn('name');
        });
    }
}

finally, run:

php artisan migrate

you can learn more via Laravel documentation

That’s all I hope I could help!