How to drop softDeletes from a table in a migration

Question

I'm adding the soft delete columns to my table in a migration:

public function up()
{
    Schema::table("users", function ($table) {
        $table->softDeletes();
    });
}

But, how can I remove these in my down() function, if I roll back the migration? Is there a built-in method to do this, or do I just manually delete the columns that get added?

Solution

On your migration class:

public function down()
{
    Schema::table("users", function ($table) {
        $table->dropSoftDeletes();
    });
}

Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint.php:

public function dropSoftDeletes()
{
    $this->dropColumn('deleted_at');
}

Since Laravel 5.5, this information can be found in the documentation.

Comments

[miken32]

Thanks; is there any actual API documentation that you used to find this? I'm using the docs at laravel.com/docs/5.2 which gives a good overview, but doesn't list every available method.

[Álvaro Guimarães]

You better navigate through the core classes. The documentation is always lacking some sugar.

[Yevgeniy Afanasyev]

OMG, after dropSoftDeletes - we are going to have a mess of historical and actual records together...

[Jquestions]

Updating Laravel framework files is not a good move?! What about updates, etc?

[Elijah Lofgren]

dropSoftDeletes() already exists in Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint.php (at least as of Laravel 8.12) so no updating of framework files is necessary.

[Álvaro Guimarães]

They were always there, just not in the docs. And I never suggested editing framework files, please don't do it @Jquestions