How to Add Nullable to an Existing Column in Laravel

When working with Laravel migrations, you might come across the following situation: you create a new table, but you forget to add nullable to your column. Later, you come across a situation where you actually want to insert a null value. But how do you add nullable to your database column through a Laravel migration?

You can achieve this creating a new migration (by using php artisan make:migration or manually creating a migration), and using the following strategy:

public function up()
{
    Schema::table('products', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->string('name')->nullable(true)->change();
    });
}

public function down()
{
    Schema::table('products', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->string('name')->nullable(false)->change();
    });
}

Now run your migration by executing:

php artisan migrate

The great thing about this strategy is that it also allows for rolling back your migration. Simply run:

php artisan migrate:rollback

The code sample above works with your Laravel Eloquent models, as well as tables without a model that you want to alter through your migration.