Database Migrations in PHP: A Complete Guide to Tools and Libraries

Database Migrations in PHP: Modern Tools and Practices

Database migrations are an integral part of modern PHP development. They allow development teams to synchronize database schema changes, track change history, and automatically apply them across different environments (local environment, staging, production). In this article, we will review the main libraries and tools for migrations in PHP, their installation, configuration, and usage examples.

What are migrations and why are they needed?

A database migration is a script that describes a schema change: creating a table, adding/removing columns, indexes, foreign keys. Migrations allow you to:

• Version database structure changes along with application code.
• Automate deployment on new servers.
• Roll back changes when necessary.
• Work in a team without conflicts.

Popular libraries for migrations in PHP

1. Phinx (robmorgan/phinx)

Phinx is one of the most popular standalone migration libraries. It is not tied to a specific framework and supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, SQL Server.

Installation via Composer:

composer require robmorgan/phinx

Creating the phinx.yml configuration file:

paths:    migrations: '%%PHINX_CONFIG_DIR%%/db/migrations'    seeds: '%%PHINX_CONFIG_DIR%%/db/seeds'

environments:    default_migration_table: phinxlog    default_database: development    development:        adapter: mysql        host: localhost        name: myapp_db        user: root        pass: ''        port: 3306        charset: utf8

Example migration (creating the users table):

<?php

use Phinx\\Migration\\AbstractMigration;

class CreateUsersTable extends AbstractMigration{    public function change()    {        $table = $this->table('users', ['id' => false, 'primary_key' => ['id']]);        $table->addColumn('id', 'biginteger', ['identity' => true])              ->addColumn('username', 'string', ['limit' => 50])              ->addColumn('email', 'string', ['limit' => 100])              ->addColumn('created_at', 'datetime')              ->addColumn('updated_at', 'datetime', ['null' => true])              ->addIndex(['email'], ['unique' => true])              ->create();    }}

Running migrations:

vendor/bin/phinx migrate -e development

2. Doctrine Migrations (doctrine/migrations)

Doctrine Migrations is part of the Doctrine ORM ecosystem. It is ideal for projects already using Doctrine. Supports all popular database management systems.

Installation:

composer require doctrine/migrations

Configuration (migrations.php):

<?phpreturn [    'table_storage' => [        'table_name' => 'doctrine_migration_versions',    ],    'migrations_paths' => [        'App\\Migrations' => './migrations',    ],    'all_or_nothing' => true,    'transactional' => true,    'check_database_platform' => true,];

Example migration:

<?php

namespace App\\Migrations;

use Doctrine\\DBAL\\Schema\\Schema;use Doctrine\\Migrations\\AbstractMigration;

class Version20240101000000 extends AbstractMigration{    public function up(Schema $schema): void    {        $table = $schema->createTable('products');        $table->addColumn('id', 'integer', ['autoincrement' => true]);        $table->addColumn('name', 'string', ['length' => 255]);        $table->addColumn('price', 'decimal', ['precision' => 10, 'scale' => 2]);        $table->se