Write your Laravel migrations in plain SQL.
If you find this package usefull, please consider bying me a coffee.
Don't get me wrong, the Laravel's SchemaBuilder is absolutely great and you can get a lot of millage out of it.
But there are cases when it's just standing in the way. Below are just a few examples where SchemaBuilder falls short.
I.e. if you're using PostgreSQL and you want to use a case insensitive data type for string/text data you may consider CITEXT. This means that we have to resort to a hack like this
class CreateUsersTable extends Migration
{
public function up()
{
Schema::create('users', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->bigIncrement('id');
$table->string('email')->unique();
// ...
});
DB::unprepared('ALTER TABLE users ALTER COLUMN email TYPE CITEXT');
}
}instead of just
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS users (
id BIGSERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
email CITEXT UNIQUE,
...
);Of course there are plenty of other data types (i.e. Range or Text Search data types in PostgreSQL) that might be very useful but SchemaBuilder is unaware of and never will be.
This is a big one, especially if you're still using reverse (down()) migrations. This means that you need to cram both new and old source code of a function/procedure/trigger in up() and down() methods of your migration file and keep them in string variables which doesn't help with readability/maintainability.
Even with heredoc / nowdoc syntax in php it's still gross.
There is a multitude of important and useful SQL standard compliant and vendor specific clauses in DDL statements that can make your life so much easier. One of the well known and frequently used ones is IF [NOT] EXISTS.
Instead of letting ShemaBuilder doing a separate query(ies) to information_schema
if (! Schema::hasTable('users')) {
// create the table
}
if (! Schema::hasColumn('users', 'notes')) {
// create the column
}you can just write it natively in one statement
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS users (id BIGSERIAL PRIMARY KEY, ...);
ALTER TABLE users ADD IF NOT EXISTS notes TEXT;Some databases (i.e. PostgreSQL) allow you to (re)create indexes concurrently without locking your table.
CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY IF NOT EXISTS some_big_table_important_column_id
ON some_big_table (important_column);
CREATE INDEX IF NOT EXISTS table_json_column_idx USING GIN ON table (json_column);You may need to create a specific type of index instead of a default btree
CREATE INDEX IF NOT EXISTS some_table_json_column_idx ON some_table (json_column) USING GIN;Or create a partial/functional index
CREATE INDEX IF NOT EXISTS some_table_nullable_column_idx
ON some_table (nullable_column)
WHERE nullable_column IS NOT NULL;When using PostgreSQL you can use an anonymous PL/pgSQL code block if you need to. I.e. dynamically (without knowing the database name ahead of time) set search_path if you want to install all extensions in a dedicated schema instead of polluting public.
The .up.sql migration could look like:
DO $$
BEGIN
EXECUTE 'ALTER DATABASE ' || current_database() || ' SET search_path TO "$user",public,extensions';
END;
$$;and the reverse .down.sql:
DO $$
BEGIN
EXECUTE 'ALTER DATABASE ' || current_database() || ' SET search_path TO "$user",public';
END;
$$;You can install the package via composer:
composer require pmatseykanets/laravel-sql-migrationsIf you're using Laravel < 5.5 or if you have package auto-discovery turned off you have to manually register the service provider:
// config/app.php
'providers' => [
...
SqlMigrations\SqlMigrationsServiceProvider::class,
],The most convenient way of creating SQL migrations is to use artisan make:migration with --sql option
php artisan make:migration create_users_table --sqlwhich will produce three files
database
└── migrations
├── 2018_06_15_000000_create_users_table.down.sql
├── 2018_06_15_000000_create_users_table.php
└── 2018_06_15_000000_create_users_table.up.sqlI know, it bloats migrations directory with additional files but this approach allows you to mix and match traditional and plain SQL migrations easily. If it's any consolation if you don't use reverse (down) migrations you can just delete *.down.sql file(s).
Note: if you're creating files manually make sure that:
- The base
phpmigration class extendsSqlMigrationclass and doesn't containup()anddown()methods, unless you mean to override the default behavior. - The filename (without extension) of
.up.sqland.down.sqlfiles matches exactly (including the timestamp part) the filename of the basephpmigration.
At this point you can forget about 2018_06_15_000000_create_users_table.php unless you want to configure or override behavior of this particular migration.
SqlMigration extends the built-in Migration so you can fine tune your migration in the same way
class CreateNextIdFunction extends SqlMigration
{
// Use a non default connection
public $connection = 'pgsql2';
// Wrap migration in a transaction if the database suports transactional DDL
public $withinTransaction = true;
}Now go ahead open up *.sql files and write your migration code.
I.e. 2018_06_15_000000_create_users_table.up.sql might look along the lines of
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS users (
id BIGSERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
name CITEXT,
email CITEXT,
password TEXT,
remember_token TEXT,
created_at TIMESTAMPTZ DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
updated_at TIMESTAMPTZ DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX IF NOT EXISTS users_email_idx ON users (email);and 2018_06_15_000000_create_users_table.down.sql
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS users;You can also pass --sql option to make:model artisan command to instruct it to create plain SQL migrations for your newly created model.
php artisan make:model Post --migration --sqlProceed as usual using migrate, migrate:rollback and other built-in commands.
You can find bare Laravel 5.6 projects with default SQL migrations here:
Please see CHANGELOG for more information about what has changed recently.
Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.
The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.