Laravel migrations change a column type from varchar to longText

Solution 1:

You can create a new migration and change just one column type:

public function up()
{
    Schema::table('sometable', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->text('text')->change();
    });
}

You need to install doctrine/dbal to make this work

composer require doctrine/dbal

Works with Laravel 5.0+. It does not work with Laravel 4.2.

Solution 2:

It's possible to do with a TABLE migration.

As mentioned in other posts, be sure to run composer require doctrine/dbal from your project root.

These are set up with:

php artisan make:migration alter_table_[yourtablenamehere]_change_[somecolumnname] --table=[yourtablenamehere]

from your project root.

From the Documentation:

https://laravel.com/docs/master/migrations#modifying-columns

class AlterTableSomething extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::table('table', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->text('column_name')->change();
        });
    }
}

Solution 3:

According to Laravel Doc

You can do it like

Schema::table('yourTable', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->text('text')->change();
});

be sure to add the doctrine/dbal dependency to your composer.json file

Solution 4:

If you get following error using change()

Unknown database type enum requested, Doctrine\DBAL\Platforms\MySQL80Platform may not support it.

this means that exists some column (not necessarily changed one) in your table which has enum type. So instead using change() you can use following function:

public function changeColumnType($table, $column, $newColumnType) {                
    DB::statement("ALTER TABLE $table CHANGE $column $column $newColumnType");
} 

And use it like that: $this->changeColumnType('sometable','text','TEXT');