Laravel Schema Builder Part3

28 February 2014

Once you database tables created, it is a complex task to update these tables names and their structure. But i think laravel has another opinion .Let’s get started and i will show you how laravel take care of you.

The first thing we need is to change table name. Here’s an example.

Schema::create('clients',function($table){
  //add clients table structure
  $table->integer('id')->primary();
 });
 //change clients table name to customers
Schema::rename('clients','customers');

Also if you like to drop table ,You can use dropIfExists() like that.

//drop customers table if exists
Schema::dropIfExists('customers');

If you like to drop column .You can provide column name to dropColumn() method .This method accepts array if you like to drop many columns. Here’s an example.

Schema::table('clients',function($table){
 //drop name column
 $table->dropColumn('name');
 //drop username,email and pwd columns
 $table->dropColumn(array('username','email','pwd'));
});

We can simply rename any column with renameColumn() method. Here’s an example.

Schema::table('clients',function($table){
 //rename name column to username
 $table->renameColumn('name','usename');
});

Do you remember primary keys that we explored in part1 of this series. Here’s simple example of primary keys.

Schema::create('clients',function($table){
 //add clients table structure
 $table->integer('id')->primary();
});

Now we can drop primary attribute of id column using dropPrimary() method like that.

Schema::table('clients',function($table){
 	$table->dropPrimary('id');
});

dropUnique() and dropIndex() is same as dropPrimary() except that they accept single parameter, which consists of table name ,column name and unique or index separated by underscores . first let’s create table with columns holding these attributes.

Schema::create('clients',function($table){
  //add clients table structure
  $table->integer('id')->index();
  $table->string('email',150)->unique();
});

Here’s how to remove these attributes.

Schema::table('clients',function($table){
  //drop unique attribute from email column
  $table->dropUnique('clients_email_unique');
  //drop index attribute from id coulmn
  $table->dropIndex('clients_id_index');
});