Laravel migration with SQLite 'Cannot add a NOT NULL column with default value NULL'

It looks like this is a SQLite oddity. According to a Laracast forum thread about the same issue:

When adding a table from scratch, you can specify NOT NULL. However, you can't do this when adding a column. SQLite's specification says you have to have a default for this, which is a poor choice.

Looking further to the SQLite ALTER TABLE docs, I found:

If a NOT NULL constraint is specified, then the column must have a default value other than NULL.

I suppose in the world of SQLite, not providing a default value is the same thing as saying the default value should be NULL (as opposed to meaning there is no default value for this non-nullable column, so a value must be provided for it on each insert).

It seems SQLite simply leaves you in a bad state if you need to add a non-nullable column to an existing table, which column should also not have a default value.

A workaround I've used successfully is to check which database driver is being used and slightly modify the migration for SQLite.

For example:

class MyMigration extends Migration
{
    public function up()
    {
        $driver = Schema::connection($this->getConnection())->getConnection()->getDriverName();

        Schema::table('invoices', function (Blueprint $table) use ($driver) {
            $table->string('stripe_invoice')->nullable()->change();

            if ($driver === 'sqlite') {
                $table->string('stripe_invoice_number')->default('');
            } else {
                $table->string('stripe_invoice_number')->after('stripe_invoice');
            }
        });
    }
}

If you don't want the column to be nullable - then you need to let Laravel know what the default should be.

One option is an empty string "" like this

public function up() {
    Schema::create('users', function($table) {
      $table->date('birthday')->after('id')->default('');
      $table->string('last_name')->after('id')->default('');
      $table->string('first_name')->after('id')->default('');

    });
  } 

All the folks solutions are good, but I wanted to find a reusable and readable way to do this, so I made a trait and hope it can help you remove some boilerplate codes out of your migrations.

The method is $this->databaseDriverIs("driver_name_here");.

Here is how I use it in a typical table creation migration:

<?php

use App\Traits\WithDatabaseDriver;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;

class CreateCountryTable extends Migration
{
  use WithDatabaseDriver;

  public function up()
  {
    Schema::create("country", function (Blueprint $table) {
      $table->increments("id");
      $table->string("name");

      $table->unique("name", "unique_country_name");
    });

    Schema::table("continent", function (Blueprint $table) {
      $column = $table->unsignedInteger("countryId");

      // This is where we apply the "fix" if 
      // the driver is SQLite
      if ($this->databaseDriverIs("sqlite")) {
        $column->nullable();
      }

      $table->foreign("countryId")->references("id")->on("country");
    });
  }

  public function down()
  {
    Schema::dropIfExists("country");
  }
}

And this is the trait that does all the job:

<?php

namespace App\Traits;

trait WithDatabaseDriver
{
  /**
   * @var string
   */
  private $driver;

  public function __construct()
  {
    $this->driver = config("database.default");
  }

  public function databaseDriverIs(string $driver): bool
  {
    return $this->driver === $driver;
  }
}

I'm not familiar with Laravel, but apparently the use of the after method to specify the order of columns appears to specifically mention ONLY MySQL (Laravel) and a discussion (GitHub) seems to point to difficulties in it's use with SQLite. It may likely be incompatible because its function: "...use the after method to specify the order of columns" design runs up against the limitation in SQLite's documentation (SQLite) for adding columns... which reads: "The new column is always appended to the end of the list of existing columns." I can't say whether assigning default values with ->default($value) can get you by or not.

you have to add

->nullable()

for the columns that may have a null value

Another work around for this issue is to first create the fields as nullable and then later change the fields to be not null. So for example in this case we will do something like the following:

public function up() {
    // Create fields first as nullable
    Schema::table('users', function(Blueprint $table) {
        $table->date('birthday')->after('id')->nullable();
        $table->string('last_name')->after('id')->nullable();
        $table->string('first_name')->after('id')->nullable();
    });

    // Either truncate existing records or assign a value to new fields
    if (true) {
        DB::table('users')->truncate();
    } else {
        DB::table('users')->update([
            'birthday' => '2019-05-01',
            'last_name' => 'last name',
            'first_name' => 'first name',
        ]);
    }

    // Change the fields to not be null
    Schema::table('users', function(Blueprint $table) {
        $table->date('birthday')->nullable(false)->change();
        $table->string('last_name')->nullable(false)->change();
        $table->string('first_name')->nullable(false)->change();
    });
}

In my case interestingly, I had to run php artisan config:cache and it actually started working for my SQLite database (source).

I'd run php artisan config:clear prior.

Quite odd, but it did the job.

I did as people explained and it worked, just make your foreign keys nullables in your migration

public function up()
{
    Schema::table('products', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->foreignId('category_id')
            ->nullable()
            ->constrained();
    });
}