Migrations are a type of version control for your database. They allow a team to modify the database schema and stay up to date on the current schema state. Migrations are typically paired with the Schema Builder to easily manage your application's schema.
With migrations you don't need to create table in phpMyAdmin, you can do it in Laravel. Here is an example to create a user table:
class CreateUsersTable extends Migration {
/**
* Run the migrations.
*
* @return void
*/
public function up()
{
Schema::create('users', function(Blueprint $table)
{
$table->increments('id'); // autoincrement id field
$table->string('name'); // string field
$table->string('lastname');
$table->string('title');
$table->string('email')->unique(); // unique string field
$table->string('password', 60); // string field with max 60 characters
$table->boolean('Status')->default(0); // string field with default value 0
$table->timestamps();
});
}
/**
* Reverse the migrations.
*
* @return void
*/
public function down()
{
Schema::drop('users');
}
}
I this code we create table with fields like "name", "lastname"... we said in our Laravel code they are string type when migration is done we have complete table in databese with this fields.
Run a migration to create table
To create a migration, you may use the make:migration command on the Artisan CLI (artisan command line interface):
php artisan make:migration create_users_table
or
php artisan make:migration create_users_table --create=users
Run a migration to alter table
When you need to do some changes in database table example: add field vote to user table you can do like this in your Laravel code without touching SQL code
php artisan make:migration add_votes_to_users_table --table=users
Rollback the last migration operation
If you make mistake and did something wrong you can always rollback to return database in previous state.
php artisan migrate:rollback
Rollback all migrations
php artisan migrate:reset
Rollback all migrations and run them all again
php artisan migrate:refresh
php artisan migrate:refresh --seed
One of best advantage of migrations are creating database without touching SQL code. You can make whole database with relationship in PHP code then migrate it into MySQL, PL/SQL, MSSQL or any other database.
Also I recommend the free Laravel 5 fundamental series, in episode 7 you can hear more about migrations.
