Laravel Default Database Tables Explained
A fresh Laravel install creates 7-8 tables depending on your packages. The core ones are users , password_resets , failed_jobs , and personal_access_tokens . The cache , sessions , jobs , and batches tables are only created if you run the corresponding Artisan commands. None of them are sacred -- you can rename, extend, or replace any of them. The core tables users Column Type What it means id…
When you first set up Laravel, it generates a set of database tables. By default, these include users, password_resets, failed_jobs, and personal_access_tokens. Additional tables like cache, sessions, jobs, and batches appear only when you execute specific Artisan commands. The core tables share common columns: an auto-incrementing primary key (id), a varchar field for names or email addresses, and timestamp columns to track when records were created or updated.
The password_resets table additionally holds a hashed token for password reset requests. Moving components like sessions and cache to the database instead of files requires creating extra tables with the php artisan session:table and php artisan cache:table commands respectively. Laravel's Sanctum package introduces personal_access_tokens for API authentication, tracked in the personal_access_tokens table.
While various modifications are possible, such as renaming the password_resets table or adding new columns like phone_number, certain elements remain essential - notably, the full stack trace in failed_jobs.exception for debugging, and the tokenable_type field in personal_access_tokens for its polymorphic relationship.
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