Database Migrations in Laravel are the way to create and alter database schema.
Introduction
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.
Creating Migrations
To create a migration, you may use the make:migration command on the Artisan CLI:
php artisan make:migration create_users_table
The migration will be placed in your database/migrations folder, and will contain a timestamp which allows the framework to determine the order of the migrations.
The --table and --create options may also be used to indicate the name of the table, and whether the migration will be creating a new table:
php artisan make:migration add_votes_to_users_table --table=users
php artisan make:migration create_users_table --create=users
Running Migrations
Running All Outstanding Migrations
php artisan migrate
Note: If you receive a "class not found" error when running migrations, try running the composer dump-autoload command.
Forcing Migrations In Production
Some migration operations are destructive, meaning they may cause you to lose data. In order to protect you from running these commands against your production database, you will be prompted for confirmation before these commands are executed. To force the commands to run without a prompt, use the --force flag:
php artisan migrate --force
Rolling Back Migrations
Rollback The Last Migration Operation:
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
For more information visit Laravel migrations reference.
