With Laravel Migration, How to change data type of a column and update its existing data to fit the new data type, without using raw SQL queries?

Here is how I performed this:

The up() method:

...use App\User;/** * Run the migrations. * * @return void */public function up(){    // do the following steps in order:    // 1- add a new column with the desired data type to the table    // 2- fill the new column with the appropriate data    // 3- delete the old column    // 4- rename the new column to match name of the deleted column    Schema::table('users', function(Blueprint $table)    {        // 1- add a new column with the desired data type to the table        // note that after() method is used to order the column and works only with MySQL        $table->boolean('is_suspended_new')->default(0)->after('is_suspended');    });    // 2- fill the new column with the appropriate data     // note that you may need to use data in the old column as a guide (like in this example)    $users = User::all();    if ($users) {        foreach ($users as $user) {            $u = User::find($user->id);            if ($u->is_suspended === 'yes') {                $u->is_suspended_new = 1;            } elseif ($u->is_suspended === 'no') {                $u->is_suspended_new = 0;            }            $u->save();        }    }    Schema::table('users', function(Blueprint $table)    {        // 3- delete the old column        $table->dropColumn('is_suspended');    });    Schema::table('users', function(Blueprint $table)    {        // 4- rename the new column to match name of the deleted column        $table->renameColumn('is_suspended_new', 'is_suspended');    });}

The down() method:

/** * Reverse the migrations. * * @return void */public function down(){    // IMPORTANT NOTE:    // because renaming (enum) column types is not supported in laravel 4.2 (as mentioned here https://laravel.com/docs/4.2/schema#renaming-columns)    // so we will make some changes in the order of the steps as follows:    //     // do the following steps in order:    // 1- rename the exiting column    // 2- add a new column with the desired data type and give it a name matches name of the existing column before renaming    // 3- fill the new column with the appropriate data    // 4- delete the old column    Schema::table('users', function(Blueprint $table)    {        // 1- rename the existing column        $table->renameColumn('is_suspended', 'is_suspended_old');    });    Schema::table('users', function(Blueprint $table)    {        // 2- add a new column with the desired data type to the table        // and give it a name matches name of the existing column before renaming        // note that after() method is used to order the column and works only with MySQL        $table->enum('is_suspended', ['yes', 'no'])->default('no')->after('is_suspended_old');    });    // 3- fill the new column with the approprite data     // note that you may need to use data in the old column as a guide (like in this example)    $users = User::all();    if ($users) {        foreach ($users as $user) {            $u = User::find($user->id);            if ($u->is_suspended_old == 1) {                $u->is_suspended = 'yes';            } elseif ($u->is_suspended_old == 0) {                $u->is_suspended = 'no';            }            $u->save();        }    }    Schema::table('users', function(Blueprint $table)    {        // 4- delete the old column        $table->dropColumn('is_suspended_old');    });}