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PHP Laravel 4 Basics Laravel and Databases Migrations & Schema Builder

Darren Burges
Darren Burges
4,453 Points
Posted by Darren Burges
Darren Burges
4,453 Points

uniqueness validation in sql pro

it seems that the uniqueness validation is not working. Per the migration code:

    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('todo_lists', function(Blueprint $table)
        {
            $table->increments('id');
            $table->string('name')->unique;
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }

the 'name' column should be required to be unique. Note however that trying to enter the same value in two different rows does not throw an error, either in sequel pro nor in the laravel app itself.

Why does this column not get provided a uniqueness property when I run the migration?

3 Answers

Petros Sordinas
Petros Sordinas
16,181 Points
Petros Sordinas
Petros Sordinas
16,181 Points

Darren,

You forgot to add the () after unique. It is a method, not a property :)

http://laravel.com/docs/4.2/schema

Darren Burges
Darren Burges
4,453 Points
Darren Burges
Darren Burges
4,453 Points

Ok, thanks for that. So why is there no error during the migration?

Petros Sordinas
Petros Sordinas
16,181 Points
Petros Sordinas
Petros Sordinas
16,181 Points

I'm not sure why no error is thrown. In theory, you should have seen a "Notice: undefined method" error. Maybe artisan has set error_reporting to not show notices...

thomascawthorn
thomascawthorn
22,986 Points

I think you'd only get an undefined method error if the method didn't exist - but Darren was calling a property not an undefined method. I think calling an undefined property will result in a warning by default (but I could be wrong!) so no exception would be thrown.

If you know $table is an instance of Blueprint, you always dive right into the Blueprint class and find out if there's a property called unique ;)