Default value for username in SQL database

I’m writing a Laravel application, and for testing in sqlite you need to specify ->nullable() or ->default(“123”) for all fields in your migration. This confuses me as my User-migration currently looks like this:

public function up() {
    Schema::create('users', function($table) {
        $table->increments('id');
        $table->integer('role_id');
        $table->string('username')->unique();
        $table->string('password');
        $table->string('name');
        $table->string('email');
        $table->integer('max_locations');
        $table->string('auth_token');
        $table->string('remember_token', 100);
        $table->timestamps();
    });
}

Many of these make no sense to add neither ->default(“123”) nor ->nullable() to. Username is a good example, I can’t have null as a username in the database, but if I set a default value that wont work either. The second user that does not have a username that gets added will take the default username, and since usernames have to be unique it will throw an exception.

Currently I have nothing specified, and SQL solves this by giving all these fields the default value “None”. Can that be added in some way here? If not, should my username have a default value or should it be nullable?

Answer

You can not have NOT NULL column with default NULL value. If you don’t want your columns to be nullable, just specify default value like this:

$table->string('username')->unique()->default('');

In your validation ofcourse you won’t let empty values so it is ok.

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Answer