Laravel 5.1 Unknown database type enum requested

It is a known issue as stated in Laravel 5.1 documentation.

Note: Renaming columns in a table with a enum column is not currently supported.

It happens when you have a enum column in your database table. Whether you are trying to rename another column, or change another column to nullable, this bug will appear. It's an issue with Doctrine\DBAL.

An easy fix for this is to just add this constructor method in your database migration file.

public function __construct()
{
    DB::getDoctrineSchemaManager()->getDatabasePlatform()->registerDoctrineTypeMapping('enum', 'string');
}

This will map all the ENUM columns to VARCHAR(), and the column will accept any string.

This worked for me on Laravel 5.1 and Laravel 5.3. I hope this bug can be fixed soon.

Credit to @Gmatkowski's answer at https://stackoverflow.com/a/32860409/1193201

The official Laravel 5.1 documentation states:

Note: Renaming columns in a table with a enum column is not currently supported.

It doesn't matter if you're trying to change another column, if the table contains a enum anywhere it won't work. It's a Doctrine DBAL issue.

As a workaround you could either drop the column and add a new one (column data will be lost):

public function up()
{
    Schema::table('users', function(Blueprint $table)
    {
        $table->dropColumn('name');
    });

    Schema::table('users', function(Blueprint $table)
    {
        $table->text('username');
    });
}

or use a DB statement:

public function up()
{
    DB::statement('ALTER TABLE projects CHANGE slug url VARCHAR(200)');
}

public function down()
{
    DB::statement('ALTER TABLE projects CHANGE url slug VARCHAR(200)');
}

Source: https://github.com/laravel/framework/issues/1186