Migrations

A migration is a PHP class describing one change to your database schema — creating a table, adding a column.

Example: a migration that creates a table

// database/migrations/..._create_posts_table.php
public function up()
{
    Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->id();
        $table->string('title');
        $table->text('body');
        $table->timestamps();
    });
}

php artisan migrate

Running php artisan migrate applies every migration that hasn't run yet, in order, creating a posts table with id, title, body, created_at, and updated_at columns ($table->timestamps() adds the last two automatically). The real value here: your whole team's database structure stays in sync through version control — every migration file committed to the repo — instead of someone manually running ad hoc SQL that only they remember they ran.