Laravel migration table field's type change

update: 31 Oct 2018, Still usable on laravel 5.7 https://laravel.com/docs/5.7/migrations#modifying-columns

To make some change to existing db, you can modify column type by using change() in migration.

This is what you could do

Schema::table('orders', function ($table) {    $table->string('category_id')->change();});

please note you need to add doctrine/dbal dependency to composer.jsonfor more information you can find it here http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/migrations#modifying-columns

The standard solution didn't work for me, when changing the type from TEXT to LONGTEXT.

I had to it like this:

public function up(){    DB::statement('ALTER TABLE mytable MODIFY mycolumn  LONGTEXT;');}public function down(){    DB::statement('ALTER TABLE mytable MODIFY mycolumn TEXT;');}

This could be a Doctrine issue. More information here.

Another way to do it is to use the string() method, and set the value to the text type max length:

    Schema::table('mytable', function ($table) {        // Will set the type to LONGTEXT.        $table->string('mycolumn', 4294967295)->change();    });

2018 Solution, still other answers are valid but you dont need to use any dependency:

First you have to create a new migration:

php artisan make:migration change_appointment_time_column_type

Then in that migration file up(), try:

    Schema::table('appointments', function ($table) {        $table->string('time')->change();    });

If you donot change the size default will be varchar(191) but If you want to change size of the field:

    Schema::table('appointments', function ($table) {        $table->string('time', 40)->change();    });

Then migrate the file by:

php artisan migrate

more info from doc.