Writing Migrations

In order to make your package's migrations seamlessly work with the actual type, use the intOrBigIntBasedOnRelated() method:

class CreateProfilesTable extends Migration
{
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('profiles', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->increments('id');

            // Make `user_id` field the same type as the `id` field of the `user` table:
            $table->intOrBigIntBasedOnRelated('user_id', Schema::connection(null), 'users.id');

            //...

            $table->foreign('user_id')
                ->references('id')
                ->on('users');
        });
    }
//...
}

This will detect the type of users.id, ie. the id field in the users table and make the user_id field in the profiles table to be the same type of field.

Internally it calls the integer() or the bigInteger() methods of the Blueprint class, so it's compatible with other parts of Laravel migrations. The library also takes care of detecting whether the field is signed or unsigned.

Compatibility

The library was tested with:

• PHP 7.1 - 8.3
• Laravel 5.4 - 11.0
• Sqlite, MySQL (5.7, 8.0, 8.2) and Postgres (11 - 16).

Possible Problems

Unfortunately* Doctrine DBAL cannot be properly used for detecting the existing schema with Laravel, therefore this library is using PDO and raw engine specific queries to find out the real schema.

*: Update Feb 2024: as Laravel 11 got rid of Doctrine DBAL now we're happy that this package just keeps working with the PDO solution 😌

As a consequence, it only works with the supported DB engines (see above).

Newer (or older) versions of the supported DB engines might return answers about their schema in a different format than this library was prepared to. This can also lead to the impossibility of detecting the actual field type.

To solve this problem, this package provides a configuration option where the application owner can tell your library what the actual type of the field is.

Next: Configuration »