I am trying to make a migration in my Laravel project, but i get the following error:

SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1072 Key column 'department_id' doesn't exist in table (SQL: alter table courses add index courses_department_id_index(department_id))

I removed 1 line from my table.php file which i thought caused the error, and then it worked just fine. Could someone explain where my syntax is wrong in the following line?

$table->foreign('department_id')->references('id')->on('departments')->onDelete('cascade');

CodePudding user response：

The error means that there is no department_id column that references the foreign key, Because you should create column before creating a foreign key, I think your migration file should contains the following:

$table->unsignedBigInteger('department_id');
$table->foreign('department_id')->references('id')->on('departments')->onDelete('cascade');