How to get a column's default value using Laravel?

Question

I am building a custom artisan command that needs to be able to access the database's default values for certain columns. I cannot use the attributes array. So instead I need another way.

I have tried to use Schema. I have been able to get the table DB::table($table) and the column names Schema::getColumnListings($table) but not the default values.

Is there some other way to get the default values?

Answer 1

The Laravel Schema Builder only returns column names by design. But you can use the same approach Laravel uses internally by executing a database statement:

$results = DB::select('
    select column_default 
    from information_schema.columns 
    where 
        table_schema = ? 
        and table_name = ?
', [$database, $table]);

// Flatten the results to get an array of the default values
$defaults = collect($results)->pluck('column_default'))

The above example works for a MySQL database, but you can see the approaches for other databases in the Illuminate\Database\Schema\Grammars namespace of the Laravel source code by searching for the method compileColumnListing.