Laravel 5 Migration change length of existed column
Stefan Izdrail
Founder & Senior Architect · 2026-06-29
Title: Efficiently Changing Existing Column Length Using Laravel Migrations
Introduction:
In software development, it is common to encounter situations where you need to change the length of an existing column in a database table. With Laravel's powerful migration feature, this can be easily achieved without any issues. This blog post aims to provide a step-by-step approach on how to efficiently modify the column length using Laravel 5 migrations.
Body:
1. Understand the context: To alter an existing column's length in database table, you should first identify the table name and the column that requires modification. This information is crucial for the process ahead.
2. Create a new migration file: Use your preferred IDE or command-line interface to create a new migration file with the name `ChangeColumnLength`. The migration class should extend the Laravel's Migration class (php artisan make:migration ChangeColumnLength).
3. Modify the method: Open the newly created migration file, and import any necessary classes, if needed. Then, add the 'up()' and 'down()' methods to handle the database changes. The up() method will perform the desired change while down() reverts these changes when required.
4. Change the column length: Within the 'up()' method, call Schema::table('tablename', function (Blueprint $table) {}); where 'tablename' is your table name. Inside this inner callback function, use the change() method to modify the existing string column. The given code example can be modified as follows:
public function up()
{
Schema::table('articles', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->string('name', 255)->change();
});
}