Simplify Your Workflow: Dropping Columns in Laravel with Migrations

How to drop column from table using migration in Laravel

In this article we will learn how can you remove column from table in Laravel using migration . As we know it's a better practice to change structure of a table using migration in laravel . So let's see how can you remove a column from table using migration .

Here in this example i have a table named ' items ' in my MySQL Database the structure is given in the below image and from this table we will remove ' catagory ' column using migration .

How to drop column in Laravel using migration

Step 1 - Create Migration :

First you have to create a migration file to write our code to drop column from table . You can use the following command to create a migration file .

php artisan make:migration drop_catagory_column_from_items_table --table=items

Now this command will create a migration file on your " database/migrations/yourfilename.php " .

Step 2 - Write migration code :

<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class DropCatagoryColumn extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::table('items', function (Blueprint $table) {
            if (Schema::hasColumn('items', 'catagory')){
  
                Schema::table('items', function (Blueprint $table) {
                    $table->dropColumn('catagory');
                });
            }
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::table('items', function (Blueprint $table) {
            //
        });
    }
}

Step 3 - Run migrate command :

Now you have to simply run your migrate command to delete the column from your table .

php artisan migrate

Step 4 - Check your table :

The above code will first check whether the catagory column is exist on your items table or not , if exists it will drop the catagory column otherwise it will leave the table as it is .

Thank you for reading this article 😊

For any query do not hesitate to comment 💬