codebright

Migrations 253
Simply change the migrations index to the name of the table which you wish to use to track your
migration status. A sensible default has been provided.
We can install our migrations table by running another Artisan command. Let’s run the install
command now.
1 $ php artisan migrate:install
2 Migration table created successfully.
Now let’s examine our database, and look for the migrations table to see what has been created.
1 mysql> describe migrations;
2 +-----------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
3 | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
4 +-----------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
5 | migration | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | |
6 | batch | int(11) | NO | | NULL | |
7 +-----------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
8 2 rows in set (0.01 sec)
A new table with two fields has been created. Don’t trouble yourself with the implementation of
the migrations table, just rest assured that it has been created, and the migrations system has been
installed.
Okay, well I have lied to you again. I don’t know how this keeps happening? Perhaps I should visit
a psychiatrist or something. Well anyway, I told you that we needed to install the migrations table,
and I lied.
You see, Laravel will automatically create the table for us if it doesn’t exist when your migrations are
executed. It will install the migrations system for you. At least you know about the migrate:install
command now though right? It’s almost as if I planned this whole deception…
Right, let’s get started and run our migration for the first time. We can use the migrate command
to do this.
1 $ php artisan migrate
2 Migrated: 2013_06_30_124846_create_users
The output from the command is a list of migrations that have been executed. Let’s take a look at
our database to see if our ‘users’ table has been created.