Populating a database in a Laravel migration file

Question

I'm just learning Laravel, and have a working migration file creating a users table. I am trying to populate a user record as part of the migration:

public function up()
{
    Schema::create('users', function($table){

        $table->increments('id');
        $table->string('email', 255);
        $table->string('password', 64);
        $table->boolean('verified');
        $table->string('token', 255);
        $table->timestamps();

        DB::table('users')->insert(
            array(
                'email' => '[email protected]',
                'verified' => true
            )
        );

    });
}

But I'm getting the following error when running php artisan migrate:

SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table or view not found: 1146 Table 'vantage.users' doesn't exist

This is obviously because Artisan hasn't yet created the table, but all the documentation seems to say that there is a way of using Fluent Query to populate data as part of a migration.

Anyone know how? Thanks!

Answer 1

Don't put the DB::insert() inside of the Schema::create(), because the create method has to finish making the table before you can insert stuff. Try this instead:

public function up()
{
    // Create the table
    Schema::create('users', function($table){
        $table->increments('id');
        $table->string('email', 255);
        $table->string('password', 64);
        $table->boolean('verified');
        $table->string('token', 255);
        $table->timestamps();
    });

    // Insert some stuff
    DB::table('users')->insert(
        array(
            'email' => '[email protected]',
            'verified' => true
        )
    );
}