I was certainly surprised when I found out that there is no built-in method to create table columns with custom types in Laravel migrations. The default list of column types available in Laravel may be more than enough for most applications, but, I think there are some valid use cases for opening the hood and directly working on the engine.
The scenario
Many DBMS offer non-standard column types that you might want to use to unlock some untapped potential. For me this was adding support for PostgreSQL’s built in enumerated types (enums) and arrays. Now, I am not claiming that using these particular types is generally a good idea (especially arrays). As always, you need to evaluate the upsides and downsides for your specific application.
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