Laravel Enum in DB: How to Add New or Modify Old Values

Enums are a popular field type in Databases to store a pre-defined list of keys. Do you know how to update enum values with Laravel? It's pretty simple!

Defining Enum Field Type in Laravel

You might have a field like this in your migration:

Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
    // ...
    $table->enum('status', ['Draft', 'Published', 'Archived']);
});

This gives you an option to have an exact list of values on the Database and not something else:

Changing Enum Values - Laravel 9 or Higher

In case you need to change the values, we can simply create a new migration and use the change() method:

Schema::table('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->enum('status', ['Draft', 'Published', 'Archived', 'Scheduled'])->change();
});

With this migration, you should now have an additional option in your Database:

What About Laravel 8 or Lower?

If you are using Laravel 8 or lower, you will have to install a 3rd party package:

composer require doctrine/dbal

Then, you can use change() method as well:

Schema::table('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->enum('status', ['Draft', 'Published', 'Archived', 'Scheduled'])->change();
});