laravel-sql-migrations

Write your Laravel migrations in plain SQL.

Contents

• Why
• Installation
• Usage
  • Make SQL Migrations
  • Run SQL Migrations
• Example Projects
• Changelog
• Contributing
• Credits
• License

Why

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.

Using additional / richer data types

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.

Managing stored functions, procedures and triggers

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.

Taking advantage of IF [NOT] EXISTS and alike

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;

Using additional options when creating indexes

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;

Taking advantage of database native procedural code (i.e. PL/pgSQL)

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 $$
BEGIN
  EXECUTE 'ALTER DATABASE ' || current_database() || ' SET search_path TO "$user",public';
END;
$$;

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require pmatseykanets/laravel-sql-migrations

If 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,
],

Usage

Make SQL migrations

The most convenient way of creating SQL migrations is to use artisan make:migration with --sql option

php artisan make:migration create_users_table --sql

which 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.sql

I 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:

1. The base php migration class extends SqlMigration class and doesn't contain up() and down() methods, unless you mean to override the default behavior.
2. The filename (without extension) of .up.sql and .down.sql files matches exactly (including the timestamp part) the filename of the base php migration.

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 --sql

Run SQL migrations

Proceed as usual using migrate, migrate:rollback and other built-in commands.

Example Projects

You can find bare Laravel 5.6 projects with default SQL migrations here:

• PostgreSQL
• MySQL

Changelog

Please see CHANGELOG for more information about what has changed recently.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.

Credits

• Peter Matseykanets
• All Contributors

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.