Tagging migration files

[imanghafoori1]

When testing we almost always need only a subset of tables to test a single feature and not the entire database, and migrations are slow especially for bigger databases.

So isn't it a good idea to be able to tag the migration classes and when migrating by artisan Artisan::call('migrate --tag=auth') only run migrations with special tags.
So recreating the entire db schema for each and every test is slow.

Suggestion:

class CreateUsersTable extends Migration
{
     public static $tags = ['auth', 'users'];

     public function up() {  ...  }
     public function down() {  ...  }
}

Maybe not the perfect idea but better than nothing.

[boliveirasilva]

Just to expand on the initial idea.

I don’t know if you’ve ever encountered this scenario, but sometimes we need to work with multiple teams on a single project; sometimes even multiple projects, all relying on a single database.

In some cases, the project starts to evolve differently across various fronts. For example, a base migration used throughout the project might need new fields for Team 1, while Team 2 is testing the possibility of changing the type of a specific field. Later on, Team 1 is ready to deploy their modifications to production database, but Team 2 still needs to complete other processes before they can release their changes.

It’s a chaotic scenario, believe me, I know.

However, it would be even more chaotic without flexible control over which migrations make sense to use in the ongoing process. I developed a change to the Eloquent commands, to add the ability to filter my migrations based on tags and thanks to this I can manage parts of the database that should or should not be migrated.

Code Example:

Artisan Command:

php artisan migrate --filter-tags auth,users

On the MigrateCommand:

  $this->migrator->setOutput($this->output)
      ->run($this->getMigrationPaths(), [
          'filter-tags' => $this->option('filter-tags'),
          ...
      ]);

On the Migrator.php:

    /**
     * Run "up" a migration instance.
     *
     * ...
     * @param  array  $filterTags
     * @return void
     */
    protected function runUp($file, $batch, $pretend, array $filterTags = [])
    {
        ...

        // When filter tags are used, only the migrations with these tags are fully
        // processed. Untagged or differently tagged migrations are ignored by the
        // migration running process.
        if ($filterTags && !array_intersect($filterTags, $migration->tags ?? [])) {
            $this->write(TwoColumnDetail::class, $name, '<fg=yellow;options=bold>filtering</>');

            return;
        }

Obviously, it’s not a silver bullet, but just an additional tool to help us achieve greater productivity and control.