Laravel Migration SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1064

Question

I'm getting a new migration error for a very old migration (used to run fine).

The error i'm getting is: 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 'CHARACTER SET utf8 NOT NULL COLLATE `utf8_unicode_ci`' at line 1 (SQL: ALTER TABLE rooms CHANGE conversion conversion TINYINT(1) CHARACTER SET utf8 NOT NULL COLLATE `utf8_unicode_ci`)

The migration file looks like this:

<?php

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;

class ChangeRoomsConversionToBoolean extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::table('rooms', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->boolean('conversion')->change();
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::table('rooms', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->string('conversion')->change();
        });
    }
}

If I run the query directly in the database ALTER TABLE rooms CHANGE conversion conversion TINYINT(1) CHARACTER SET utf8 NOT NULL COLLATE `utf8_unicode_ci` I get the error: 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 'CHARACTER SET utf8 NOT NULL' at line 1

Im running on Homestead with Laravel 5.6.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I believe there are some issues with how Laravel is configuring DBAL; however, I think the following will resolve your issue:

    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::table('rooms', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->boolean('conversion')->charset(null)->collation(null)->change();
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::table('rooms', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->string('conversion')->change();
        });
    }

I'm basing this answer off of looking at the source code for framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Schema/Grammars/MySqlGrammar.php. You can see here, in your instance you do not want the specify a Character Set or collation for bigint. In order to skip these two options I think the only solution is to set those two values to null manually. Here is the source code where that section of the MySQL query is formed:

    /**
     * Append the character set specifications to a command.
     *
     * @param  string  $sql
     * @param  \Illuminate\Database\Connection  $connection
     * @param  \Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint  $blueprint
     * @return string
     */
    protected function compileCreateEncoding($sql, Connection $connection, Blueprint $blueprint)
    {
        // First we will set the character set if one has been set on either the create
        // blueprint itself or on the root configuration for the connection that the
        // table is being created on. We will add these to the create table query.
        if (isset($blueprint->charset)) {
            $sql .= ' default character set '.$blueprint->charset;
        } elseif (! is_null($charset = $connection->getConfig('charset'))) {
            $sql .= ' default character set '.$charset;
        }

        // Next we will add the collation to the create table statement if one has been
        // added to either this create table blueprint or the configuration for this
        // connection that the query is targeting. We'll add it to this SQL query.
        if (isset($blueprint->collation)) {
            $sql .= " collate '{$blueprint->collation}'";
        } elseif (! is_null($collation = $connection->getConfig('collation'))) {
            $sql .= " collate '{$collation}'";
        }

        return $sql;
    }