How to reset auto increment in laravel user deletion?

Question

I have been struggling to find out a way to reset the auto increment value in Laravel 4 but it seems that this functionality is not embedded in laravel 4 at least for now. so i

Answer 1

Like everyone else replied, there is not really a need to move the counter back when you delete a row. You can however truncate a table which will delete all the table rows and reset the counter.

You cannot truncate a table that has Foreign Key Constraints applied on it (truncate is not the same as delete which simply deletes all the rows while keeping the auto-increment counter.).

Hence, while using foreign key constrains, MySQL might stop you from truncating a table which has foreign key constraints applied to it.

You can perform the following steps to achieve what you want, but beware, there may be a risk to your data integrity. I only use it for my testing purposes.

1. Edit the DatabaseSeeder class (which is available at app/database/seeds/DatabaseSeeder.php) as follows:

   call('UserTableSeeder');
           // ...
   
           // FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS is supposed to only apply to a single
           // connection and reset itself but I like to explicitly
           // undo what I've done for clarity
           DB::statement('SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1;');
       }
   }
   

2. Now the Table Seeder classes (Example, UserTableSeeder in this case, which should be created at app/database/seeds/UserTableSeeder.php) can call truncate table(s) as follows:

   truncate();
   
   
           // The auto-increment has been reset.
           // Now we can start adding users.
           User::create(
               array(
                   'email' => 'example@domain.com',
                   'password' => Hash::make('test')
               )
           );
       }
   }