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Laravel Basics

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Intro to Models

3:14 with Jonathan Barrios

Now that we’ve covered Routing, Controllers, and Views, let’s talk about the final element: Models. Models are the direct connection between a database and the Laravel application. In a perfect world, Models will directly mirror the structure of your database. That is to say, each database table corresponds to a model-- the user model interacts with the user table, and so on. Let’s look at how we can connect our Laravel application to the database.

A migration class contains two methods: up and down. In Laravel, the up() function will run when you use the php artisan migrate command and the down() function will run when you use the php artisan migrate:rollback command.

Learn more about: running Migrations

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    [MUSIC] 0:00
    [SOUND] Welcome back. 0:03
    Now that we've covered routing, controllers and views, 0:06
    let's talk about the final element, models. 0:09
    Models are the direct connection between the database and the Laravel application. 0:14
    In a perfect world, models will directly mirror the structure of your database. 0:19
    That is to say, each database table corresponds to a model. 0:24
    The user model interacts with the user table, and so on. 0:29
    Let's take a look at how we can connect our Laravel application to the database. 0:33
    To start connecting our database, we need to delete the default migrations in 0:39
    the Database forward slash Migrations directory. 0:43
    Then create a model using the php artisan make model course -m command. 0:46
    The dash m flag tells Laravel to create a migration for us, 0:56
    which really speeds up development and course is the name for the model. 1:00
    After we create the model and migration, we need to update the current default 1:05
    migration schema in the database forward slash migrations directory. 1:10
    This is what the default schema looks like. 1:15
    As you can see, the default schema is very minimal and 1:18
    does not contain the data types we will need for our application. 1:22
    Let's take a look at the completed Laravel app. 1:26
    And each of the data types that we need to add to our default schema. 1:29
    As you can see, we have a title, summary, duration, language, 1:33
    and difficulty displayed for each course in our library. 1:39
    Next, let's add new fields for our tables in order for our application 1:45
    to handle the new data types such as string, integer and long text. 1:50
    In the data base facade, you will see each data type represented such as the title, 1:55
    followed by a summary of long text as well as an integer for duration, 2:00
    a string for language in difficulty and another integer for number of stages. 2:05
    Let's modify the default schema inside of the database forward slash 2:10
    migrations directory and the file that ends with create courses tables.php. 2:15
    Once inside of this file, 2:25
    modify the public function named up using the project files like this. 2:27
    With the updated schema, our app will be able to migrate and 2:38
    see the correct data with very little effort on our part. 2:42
    If you're not familiar with the up and down functions, 2:46
    check the teachers notes below for more information about migration class methods. 2:49
    Now that we've set up our database, we'll give our app control of the database and 2:55
    its structure by using migrations, which we'll cover in an upcoming video. 3:00
    And the next section, we'll explore Laravel's built in 3:05
    PHP tool Tinker to quickly read data from our database. 3:09
    See you in the next section. 3:13

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