How to change data type of column in laravel migration ?

In this blog post we will learn to change data type of column in laravel migration. Laravel covers most of the migration features like add, delete, indexing etc. but to modify the table like renaming column, change data type column to existing table laravel uses a separate package doctrine/dbal. In laravel migration we can change data type of colum to existing table using the method change().

We can install the doctrine/dbal by composer and then we can call function change().

I hope you know about How to make database connection in Laravel 8 ?

We will use the php artisan command to generate the rename column in laravel migration and php artisan migrate command to modify the table.

I am assuming that you have already table movies in database and now we are renaming a column and also you can read How to add column in laravel migration ?

Simple step to change data type of column in laravel migration

Let’s understand the data type of column in laravel migration in laravel step by step

Step 1 : Install doctrine/dbal package

To change the column data type, first we need to install the dependency of doctrine/dbal so install using composer in project root directory

composer require doctrine/dbal

Step 2 : Generate migration file

Once dependency added, now generate the migration file we will use the laravel artisan command so open the terminal in project and run below command

php artisan make:migration ChangeStatusTypeMoviesTable

Above command will create a migration file in folder database/migrations

Output: 
Created Migration: 2022_02_20_064033_change_status_type_movies_table

Step 3 : Open generated migration file and update

In the last step we created a migration file using the artisan command and now we wanted to change the data type of column to schema of movies table.

so let’s open the file and start editing

<?php

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

class ChangeStatusTypeMoviesTable extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        //
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        //
    }
}

In the file there is a class named as ChangeStatusTypeMoviesTable and it extends Migration class. ChangeStatusTypeMoviesTable class contains two methods one is up and other one is down.

Up is used to update the database scheme and down method is used to rollback the changes of this migration. As you can see we are creating table movies in up method and dropping the table in down method.

let’s add change the data type of column using change and string method method from our table before updating the database.

 public function up()
 {
        Schema::table('movies', function (Blueprint $table) {
           $table->string('status_new',['1','0'])->change();
        });
 }
 public function down()
 {
        Schema::table('movies', function (Blueprint $table) {
              $table->integer('status_new',11)->change();
        });
 }

Here we used Schema::table to update the table.

Step 3 : Run Migration

In this step we will execute our migration in database using below command

php artisan migrate

This will create table in database and the output

Output: 
Migrating: 2022_02_20_064033_change_status_type_movies_table
Migrated:  2022_02_20_064033_change_status_type_movies_table (72.03ms)

Screenshot Before:

Screenshot After:

List of modifiers

Source : Laravel