Unable to Conditionally Execute Database Migrations Based on Connection in Laravel

[jelovac]

Description

I’m working on a Laravel application that uses multiple database connections, and I want to conditionally execute migrations depending on the connection.

Setup

Database Connections

• core: Default connection for core application data and user accounts.
• personal: Used for user-specific data.

Goal

• Always run migrations for the core connection.
• Programmatically run migrations for the personal connection.

What I’ve Tried

1. Declaring the $connection property in a migration file, as described in the Laravel documentation:

   protected $connection = 'personal';

   This works for targeting specific connections.

2. Organizing migrations into separate directories:

   • database/migrations/core
   • database/migrations/personal

   Then running commands like:

   • php artisan migrate --path=/database/migrations/core
   • php artisan migrate --database=core

3. Using the migrate:fresh command with similar configurations.

Issue

None of these approaches work as expected.

• The --path and --database options do not seem to achieve the desired behavior for conditionally targeting connections. All migrations are executed.
• It’s unclear if this is an issue with the Laravel framework or if I’m misunderstanding the intended usage.

Environment

• Laravel version: 11.35.1
• PHP version: 8.3

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create two database connections (core and personal) in the config/database.php file.
2. Place migration files in separate directories for core and personal.
3. Attempt to run migrations for a specific connection using the --path or --database options.

Expected Behavior

The migrations should be executed for the specified connection.

Actual Behavior

Instead of executing the migrations which target specified connections all migrations are executed.

Is this a bug in the recent Laravel version, or am I missing something in the configuration?

[jelovac]

I was partially mistaken. The --path flag seems to work. The --database does not.

After further troubleshooting I figured out that the error comes from the laravel-ide-helper package which tries to generate model definitions for models which use personal connection. Since the connection is not available the error is thrown (Could not analyze class ***).

I disabled for now in ide_helper.php:

    'post_migrate' => [
         'ide-helper:models --nowrite',
    ],

Will need to figure a way how to generate model definitions for models whose database connections are not accessible by default.

[jelovac]

As for the --database flag, it indicates the connection where the migrations table and its records will be stored.