Laravel: Adding new column/columns to the existing table in a migration

Adding New Column to an existing table

In this article, you will learn the step-by-step procedure to add single or multiple columns in our existing database tables using Laravel migration.

Step 1: To get started, open the command prompt or terminal and navigate to the root directory of our Laravel project.

Step 2: Type the following command to create a new migration file:

php artisan make:migration add_phone_number_to_schools

This code will create an add_type_to_notes file in the migration folder. it will look like this-

Now, replace the column_name with the name of the column you want to add and the table_name with the name of the table you want to modify.

Step 3: Open the newly created migration file in the database/migrations folder. Inside the up function, add the code to create the new column or columns:

<?php use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema; use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint; use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration; class AddPhoneNumberToSchools extends Migration {     /**      * Run the migrations.      *      * @return void      */     public function up()     {          Schema::table('schools', function (Blueprint $table) {             $table->string('phone_number', 10)->nullable(false)->default(null);         });     }     /**      * Reverse the migrations.      *      * @return void      */     public function down()     {         Schema::table('schools', function (Blueprint $table) {             $table->dropColumn('phone_number');         });     } }

Step 4: Run the migration command.

Initially, our screen will look like the below image. 

As soon as we run the migration command a new column will be added and our database will look like the below image.

To make our database look like the above image and add a new column, we have to add the below code to our database.

php artisan migrate C:\xampp\htdocs\laraveltest>php artisan migrate Migrating: 2023_05_01_055549_add_phone_number_to_schools Migrated: 2023_05_01_055549_add_phone_number_to_schools (21.14ms) C:\xampp\htdocs\laraveltest>

Adding Multiple Columns to an Existing Table using Laravel Migration

To add multiple columns to the existing table 

Step 1: Navigate to the root directory and enter the following command

php artisan make:migration add_multiple_column_to_schools

Step 2: As we want to add multiple columns to the existing table, we have to introduce the column name in our code. 

Use the below command to introduce new column names. 

<?php namespace App\Models; use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model; class School extends Model {     protected $fillable = [         'school_name', 'email', 'country', 'phone_number', 'Afiliated_by', 'School_location', 'Medium'     ]; }

Step 3: Adding code to the newly added migration file.

<?php use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema; use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint; use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration; class AddMultipleColumnToSchools extends Migration {     /**      * Run the migrations.      *      * @return void      */     public function up()     {         Schema::table('schools', function (Blueprint $table) {             $table->string('afiliated_by')->nullable();             $table->string('short_description')->nullable();            $table->string('medium')->nullable()         });     }     /**      * Reverse the migrations.      *      * @return void      */     public function down()     {         Schema::table('schools', function (Blueprint $table) {             $table->dropColumn(['afiliated_by',  'short_description', 'medium']);         });     } }

Step 4: Run the below command and check the database:

php artisan migrate

The final image shows that we have successfully added multiple columns in the existing table using Laravel migration.