laravel migration re-organising column order

Question

When you create a new column in a table you can use the ->after(\'column name\') to dictate where it goes. How can I create a migration that re-orders the columns in the right o

Answer 1

If you want to do it without destroying data, you could migrate the data across at the same time you do the schema update:

use DB;

public function up()
{
    //Give the moving column a temporary name:
    Schema::table('users', function($table)
    {
        $table->renameColumn('name', 'name_old');
    });

    //Add a new column with the regular name:
    Schema::table('users', function(Blueprint $table)
    {
        $table->string('name')->after('city');
    });

    //Copy the data across to the new column:
    DB::table('users')->update([
        'name' => DB::raw('name_old')   
    ]);

    //Remove the old column:
    Schema::table('users', function(Blueprint $table)
    {
        $table->dropColumn('name_old');
    });
}