Table naming conventions in Laravel - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Table Naming Conventions in Laravel

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple Laravel application to manage books and authors. Laravel uses conventions to name database tables automatically based on model names.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to create tables with proper Laravel naming conventions and understand how Laravel links models to tables.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a model called Book and understand its default table name

Create a model called Author and understand its default table name

Create a custom table name for a model

Use Laravel's migration files to define tables with correct names

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Most Laravel applications use these naming conventions to keep code clean and predictable when working with databases.

💼 Career

Understanding Laravel's table naming conventions is essential for backend developers working with Laravel to build scalable and maintainable applications.

1

Create a Book model and migration

Run the artisan command to create a model called Book with a migration file. The migration will create a table named books by Laravel's default naming convention.

Laravel

# Run the artisan command to create Book model and migration
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use php artisan make:model Book -m to create both model and migration.

2

Create an Author model and migration

Run the artisan command to create a model called Author with a migration file. Laravel will create a table named authors by default.

Laravel

php artisan make:model Book -m
# Run the artisan command to create Author model and migration
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use php artisan make:model Author -m to create both model and migration.

3

Create a model with a custom table name

Create a model called Person with a migration. Then, inside the Person model file, set the protected property $table to 'people' to override Laravel's default table name.

Laravel

php artisan make:model Book -m
php artisan make:model Author -m
# Create Person model and migration
php artisan make:model Person -m

# In app/Models/Person.php, add protected $table = 'people';
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Override the table name by adding protected $table = 'people'; inside the model class.

4

Define migration files with correct table names

Open the migration files for books, authors, and people tables. Ensure the Schema::create method uses the correct table names: books, authors, and people respectively.

Laravel

php artisan make:model Book -m
php artisan make:model Author -m
php artisan make:model Person -m

// In app/Models/Person.php
<?php

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Person extends Model
{
    protected $table = 'people';
}

// Edit migration files to use correct table names
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Check each migration file uses Schema::create with the correct table name.