Unable to update column attributes in Laravel 5.1 using CHAR datatype

Question

Here is the code in my migration:

public function up()
{
    Schema::table('companies', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->char('default_unit_for_weight', 2)->default('kg')->after('notes')->change();
        $table->char('default_currency', 3)->default('EUR')->after('default_unit_for_weight')->change();
    });
}

When I run migration, I get the following error:

[Doctrine\DBAL\DBALException] Unknown column type "char" requested. Any Doctrine type that you use has to be registered with \Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type::addType(). You can get a list of all the known types with \Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type::getTypesMap(). If this error occurs during database introspection then you might have forgot to register all database types for a Doctrine Type. Use AbstractPlatform#registerDoctrineTypeMapping() or have your custom types implement Type#getMappedDatabaseTypes(). If the type name is empty you might have a problem with the cache or forgot some mapping information.

When I checked \Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type class, I found the following code:

const TARRAY = 'array';
const SIMPLE_ARRAY = 'simple_array';
const JSON_ARRAY = 'json_array';
const BIGINT = 'bigint';
const BOOLEAN = 'boolean';
const DATETIME = 'datetime';
const DATETIMETZ = 'datetimetz';
const DATE = 'date';
const TIME = 'time';
const DECIMAL = 'decimal';
const INTEGER = 'integer';
const OBJECT = 'object';
const SMALLINT = 'smallint';
const STRING = 'string';
const TEXT = 'text';
const BINARY = 'binary';
const BLOB = 'blob';
const FLOAT = 'float';
const GUID = 'guid';

This means Doctrine does not support datatype CHAR. Is there any way to make it possible to change the column attributes in Laravel 5.1 with CHAR datatype?

Answer 1

You have to add few lines

    use Doctrine\DBAL\Types\StringType;
    use Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type;
    
    public function up() {
        if (!Type::hasType('char')) {
            Type::addType('char', StringType::class);
        }
Schema::table('table_name', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->char('default_unit_for_weight', 2)->default('kg')->after('notes')->change();
            $table->char('default_currency', 3)->default('EUR')->after('default_unit_for_weight')->change();
        }
}

https://github.com/laravel/framework/issues/27518