Laravel : Create Model with Migration, Controller and generate DB Table

Creating a Model in Laravel

Laravel makes it very easy to create a new Model.
A Model represents the M part of the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture.
It is a PHP class that maps to a database table and performs Eloquent ORM operations.

Step 1: Create a New Model

Let's say you are building a Blog Application. Every blog application has posts, so you'll first create a Post model.

Open your Terminal or Command Prompt, navigate to your Laravel project root, and run:

php artisan make:model Post -mr

• -m generates a migration file.

• -r generates a resourceful controller.

After running the command, you'll notice:

1. A new Post.php model is created under the App\Models directory (in older Laravel versions, under App directly):

<?php

namespace App\Models; // or App in older versions

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Post extends Model
{
    //
}

2. A new migration file is created under database/migrations/ (something like 2025_04_29_000000_create_posts_table.php):

<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class CreatePostsTable extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->increments('id');
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::dropIfExists('posts');
    }
}

3. A new resourceful controller is created under App\Http\Controllers:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Models\Post; // Adjust namespace if needed
use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class PostController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * Display a listing of the resource.
     */
    public function index()
    {
        //
    }
    
    // Other methods: create, store, show, edit, update, destroy
}

Step 2: Define Table Structure

Now, let's update the migration file to include fields that posts typically need, such as title and body.

Edit the up() Method in your migration like this:

public function up()
{
    Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->increments('id');
        $table->string('title');
        $table->text('body');
        $table->timestamps();
    });
}

• title: A short text for the post's title (using string).

• body: A longer text for the post's content (using text).

Step 3: Run the Migration

Now, create the database table by running:

php artisan migrate

This command will generate the posts table in your database.

Summary

• You created a Model, a Migration, and a Resourceful Controller.

• You updated the migration to define the posts table fields.

• You ran the migration to create the actual database table.

Now you're ready to start working with posts in your Laravel application!