How Can I Set the Default Value of a DATE Column to the Current date with Laravel Migrations?

Question

I'm having some issues with creating a migration, one of the columns I have on the table is a DATE type, not DATETIME or TIMESTAMPS. And the problem is that I can't find a way to define the default value for this column, I've tried the following:

$table->date('request_date')->default(Carbon::now());
//This uses the date the migration was created as a default, not the current date.

$table->date('request_date')->default(DB::raw('CURRENT_DATE()'));

$table->date('request_date')->default(DB::raw('date(now())'));

$table->date('request_date')->default(DB::raw('CURRENT_DATE'));

And using the DB:raw is giving me an error:

SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: Doctrine\DBAL\Driver\PDO\Exception::("SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1064 You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'CURRENT_DATE() after issue_date, add expiry_date date null after `request_da' at line 1")

Any recommendation would be appreciated, thanks!

Answer 1

in MySQL, you can not set default to current date. In your case, you can use request_date as a TIMESTAMP fields, and in your model, you cast it to date format.

$table->timestamp('request_date')->useCurrent()

And in your model:

protected $casts = [
    'request_date' => 'datetime:Y-m-d',
];

This way is much more flexible. If in the future, you need to get the time, you still can do it