laravel-exodus

Converts YAML to actual Laravel migration files.

Install

composer require --dev eyf/laravel-exodus

Usage

Step 1: Create database/migrations.yaml file

Define a posts table:

# database/migrations.yaml

posts:
    id: true
    timestamps: true
    softDeletes: true
    slug: string(100).unique
    title: string
    content: text
    excerpt: string.nullable
    author_id: foreignId.constrained('users')

Step 2: Make migrations (command)

Run exodus command to translate the yaml file into actual Laravel migration files:

php artisan exodus

Created Migration: 2020_05_05_100005_create_posts_table

Step 3: migrate as normal

php artisan migrate

Workflow

Exodus is a DEV package, it is meant to ease / speed up development time.

A normal workflow while DEV'ing could be:

1. Create migrations.yaml file (Add a posts table)
2. php artisan exodus
3. php artisan migrate
4. Edit migrations.yaml file (Add a users table)
5. php artisan exodus
6. php artisan migrate:refresh (--seed)
7. Edit migrations.yaml file
8. ... (Repeat)

The exodus.lock file

By default the migration file names won't change between multiple exodus runs.

This is because Exodus keeps track of the initial migration file name in database/exodus.lock (to commit in your repository).

This makes sure git sees the edits in the same migration file throughout the whole DEV.

The force option

Sometimes you may want to bypass the exodus.lock file (For example when you want to change the table order creation).

php artisan exodus --force

What happens:

1. All "old" migration files will be deleted (the ones in current exodus.lock)
2. New migration files will be generated (with newest date in filename)

Syntax

Column

Any column can be written fluently exactly like in the Laravel migration syntax. In fact Exodus is just a light translator of a "dot notation" array to the actual PHP syntax.

my_table:
    my_column_name: string(50).nullable.unique

Special column

Special column types are the "sugar" methods provided by Laravel for a better developer experience: id(), timestamps(), softDeletes(), rememberToken(), etc...

Since these column types don't have a column name (name is in the convention), just specify true as their value:

my_table:
    id: true
    timestamps: true
    softDeletes: true

Pivot tables

For generating a pivot table, just use two table names as follow:

users:
    id: true
    name: string

posts:
    id: true
    title: string

"@users @posts": []

This will create the following pivot migration file:

<?php
// database/migrations/2020_05_05_085245_create_post_user_pivot_table.php

class CreatePostUserPivotTable extends Migration
{
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create("post_user", function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table
                ->foreignId("post_id")
                ->index()
                ->constrained();
            $table
                ->foreignId("user_id")
                ->index()
                ->constrained();
            $table->primary(["post_id", "user_id"]);
        });
    }

    public function down()
    {
        Schema::dropIfExists("post_user");
    }
}

You can even provide more columns to the pivot table as normal:

"@users @posts":
    timestamps: true
    approved_by: foreignId.nullable.constrained('users')
    approved_at: timestamp.nullable

Phylosophy

This package aims at speedind up development time. It is not meant to be used after you have launched to production. In fact the package does not provide a way to run migrations for adding or removing columns (it used to).

This is by choice.

While DEV'ing you should edit the migrations.yaml file as much as you want and run migrate:refresh (--seed) as often as possible. "This is the way".

By the time you are happy with your Schema, you must have launched in production, and then only you may create normal Laravel migration files for adding or removing column(s) in your tables. This is where the job of this package ends.

TODO: Implement safety guard making sure exodus cannot be run if it detects more migrations files than in exodus.lock.