Mastering Laravel Migration and Eloquent

Mastering Laravel Migration and Eloquent

Laravel Migration and Eloquent are essential tools for managing database structures and simplifying database interactions. In this blog post, we’ll explore some advanced features of Laravel Migration and Eloquent, complete with examples to help you take your web application development to the next level.

Part 1: Advanced Laravel Migration Features

1.1 Conditional Migrations

Laravel provides a simple way to execute migrations conditionally. This is useful when you need to create or alter tables based on certain conditions, such as whether a specific table exists.

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

class CreatePostsTable extends Migration
{
    public function up()
    {
        if (!Schema::hasTable('posts')) {
            Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
                $table->id();
                $table->string('title');
                $table->text('body');
                $table->timestamps();
            });
        }
    }

    public function down()
    {
        Schema::dropIfExists('posts');
    }
}

1.2 Using Multiple Database Connections

Laravel supports multiple database connections, allowing you to perform migrations on different databases simultaneously.

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

class CreateInventoryTable extends Migration
{
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::connection('mysql2')->create('inventory', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->id();
            $table->string('product_name');
            $table->integer('quantity');
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }

    public function down()
    {
        Schema::connection('mysql2')->dropIfExists('inventory');
    }
}

Part 2: Advanced Eloquent Features

2.1 Eloquent Accessors and Mutators

Accessors and mutators in Eloquent allow you to format attributes when retrieving them from a model or setting them on a model, respectively.

// Accessor
class User extends Model
{
    public function getFullNameAttribute()
    {
        return $this->attributes['first_name'] . ' ' . $this->attributes['last_name'];
    }
}

// Usage
$user = User::find(1);
echo $user->full_name;

// Mutator
class User extends Model
{
    public function setPasswordAttribute($value)
    {
        $this->attributes['password'] = bcrypt($value);
    }
}

2.2 Eloquent Query Scopes

Query scopes enable you to define reusable query constraints for your models. Using query scopes, you can chain additional constraints on a query without repeating the same code.

class Post extends Model
{
    public function scopePublished($query)
    {
        return $query->where('published', 1);
    }

    public function scopeRecent($query)
    {
        return $query->orderBy('created_at', 'desc');
    }
}

// Usage
$publishedPosts = Post::published()->get();
$recentPublishedPosts = Post::published()->recent()->get();

By incorporating these techniques into your web application development workflow, you’ll be able to create more efficient and maintainable Laravel applications. Happy coding!

Sauvik Kundu