Adding column to user table

johnhoward

I'm running a migration to add a new column to the user table, everything appears to have worked as intended but no new column appears in the db user table. It may be a problem to do with my inexperience, but I figure I'll post what I've got and see if someone can point me in right direction. Maybe I've misunderstood the process.

2018_02_13_000000_create_user_column.php in workbench/myextension/migrations/

<?php use Flarum\Database\Migration; return [ 'up' => function () { Migration::addColumns('users', [ 'firstName' => ['string', 'nullable' => true], ]); }, 'down' => function() { Migration::dropColumns('users', [ 'firstName' => ['string', 'nullable' => true], ]); } ];

Then i run php flarum migrate and get

Migrating extension: myextension Migrated: 2018_02_13_000000_create_user_column

I run mysql command show columns in users; and i do not see the new column listed.

I've cleared the cache
Reinstalled my extension

If no answer comes to mind, confirmation of the process being correct will help me.

Thank you 😉

clarkwinkelmann

johnhoward that's not the correct syntax for Migration::addColumns. Have a look at an existing migration like https://github.com/flarum/core/blob/afe06ea750cfd81767461a3884a92a26f0b0ce37/migrations/2017_04_07_114138_add_is_private_to_discussions.php for guidance 😉

Your migration should probably look something like this (untested):

<?php

use Flarum\Database\Migration;

return Migration::addColumns('discussions', [
    'firstName' => ['string', 'nullable' => true],
]);

The Migration:: helpers actually return an ['up' => ..., 'down' => ...] array already. In your current code the migration actually runs, but the call to addColumns create an up/down definition that's never used anywhere 😁

EDIT: also, P.S., naming the column firstname or first_name might be more fitting with the Flarum naming scheme. Mixing lower and uppercase will work, but I don't think it's a common thing to do.

johnhoward

Thanks for the detailed response @clarkwinkelmann

That makes sense, since i didn't get any errors. I wasn't sure what i should do when this happened, since it's easy to feel overwhelmed with the endless possibilities of why it's not working, especially in the face of unfamiliarity with multiple processes.

I took the approach i did from an extension which followed a similar path to the functionality i desired, but ultimately it was an obsolete approach that i followed, and as such i need to step back next time and reassess it better.

I'll need to read the documentation more thoroughly too because i could have avoided this if i did 😉

For anyone who stumbles across this thread, i believe you'll need to specify a length for the string type, other wise you'll get sql errors when you run php flarum migrate

Working code:

<?php

use Flarum\Database\Migration;

return Migration::addColumns('users', [
    'first_name' => ['string', 'length' => 128, 'nullable' => true]
]);