README

This package is used to deliver seamless data migrations to Laravel. Data migrations are version control system for your mandatory DB data (like statuses, types, etc.) without which the app wouldn't function.

One alternative is to burn these within your plain migrations, other is just to use seeders at which point you need to devise a mechanism to split production grade seeders from the development ones.

These are all good solutions as long as you follow some methodology and are consistent. The goal of this package was to deliver a real separation for this use case.

Installation

Require the package with composer require norgul/laravel-data-migrations. Service provider will be registered automatically.

Usage

You can start using the package by running commands below which are following Laravel migration command structure with, for the most part, the same API they provide.

Remember you can add -h flag to show all available options for a particular command.

Commands

Make Data Migration

php artisan make:data-migration {name}

Create your first data migration. This will create data-migrations directory in your database directory if it doesn't already exist, which is the place where you'll find already familiar naming structure.

Package is using Laravel migrator in the background, so if you run:

php artisan make:data-migration add_user_types_to_users_table

The table guesser will automatically add a data migration with users table stubbed in.

Even though you can reference Eloquent classes and even your seeders from within data migrations, it is highly recommended to use DB facade to execute queries. Reason behind it is that your classes and seeders may change over time, thus leaving your data migrations execute differently in the future. Always using DB facade will ensure that end results are always the same.

Data Migrate

php artisan data-migrate

Execute your migrations with data-migrate command. These will be executed once, in the same way as standard migrations are ran (by executing up() function).

Command will automatically create data_migrations table in the DB if it doesn't already exist.

Data Migrate Rollback

php artisan data-migrate:rollback

You can revert your changes by executing this command which will trigger down() function in the data migration.

Data Migrate Install

php artisan data-migrate:install

You never need to run this command explicitly. It is here for documentation purposes.

This command will create data_migrations table in your DB.