Changing enum column in Laravel migration

Max Hutschenreiter - 05 Mar 2020

Changing enum type columns is currently not supported in Laravel, and if you try to run something like:

$table->enum('example_enum_column', array('enum1','enum2','enum3+'))->nullable()->change();

You are about to get the following exception:

Doctrine\DBAL\DBALException : Unknown database type enum requested, Doctrine\DBAL\Platforms\MariaDb1027Platform may not support it.

at /var/www/vendor/doctrine/dbal/lib/Doctrine/DBAL/Platforms/AbstractPlatform.php:436
432|
433| $dbType = strtolower($dbType);
434|
435| if (! isset($this->doctrineTypeMapping[$dbType])) {
436| throw new DBALException(‘Unknown database type ‘ . $dbType . ‘ requested, ‘ . static::class . ‘ may not support it.’);
437| }
438|
439| return $this->doctrineTypeMapping[$dbType];
440| }

Exception trace:

1 Doctrine\DBAL\Platforms\AbstractPlatform::getDoctrineTypeMapping(“enum”)
/var/www/vendor/doctrine/dbal/lib/Doctrine/DBAL/Schema/MySqlSchemaManager.php:128

2 Doctrine\DBAL\Schema\MySqlSchemaManager::_getPortableTableColumnDefinition()
/var/www/vendor/doctrine/dbal/lib/Doctrine/DBAL/Schema/AbstractSchemaManager.php:810

Currently, there is no legal solution for this problem except avoiding enums, but there is a workaround:

Create migration with the following

    public function up()
    {
        DB::statement("ALTER TABLE `table` CHANGE `example_enum_column` `example_enum_column` ENUM('enum1', 'enum2', 'enum3+');");
    }

And that will do the trick with the enum update you are looking for.

Additionally, you can create handle down functions to revert field status as it used to be:

     public function down() 
     {
         DB::statement("ALTER TABLE `table` CHANGE `example_enum_column` `example_enum_column` ENUM('enum1', 'enum2');"); 
     }

Tags: Laravel · Enum · Enum Migration · Laravel Enum