Updating Column Types with Laravel's Schema Builder

Hi Everybody,

Today we will discuss how to update column type with Laravel 5.1 Schema Builder.

Laravel makes database migrations very easy with its Schema Builder. It has a lot of built-in methods to add tables, columns, indexes, etc. However, it's easy to forget that you can do so much more with just plain old SQL queries.

I needed to change the type of a column from VARCHAR to TEXT. Here's what I ran in a migration file:


public function up()
{
    DB::statement('ALTER TABLE flavours MODIFY COLUMN description TEXT');
}

public function down()
{
    DB::statement('ALTER TABLE flavours MODIFY COLUMN description VARCHAR(255)');
}   

I think this will make you little help.

Thanks.