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Your Laravel migrations are already the definitive source of truth for your database schema. Geni takes advantage of that fact by parsing your migration files directly — in timestamp order — and replaying them into an in-memory schema representation. The result is a complete, accurate picture of your table structure that Geni uses to map route parameters, model attributes, and response shapes to their correct OpenAPI types, all without ever opening a database connection.

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Supported Blueprint Methods

Geni recognizes all standard Laravel migration Blueprint methods and maps them to their corresponding OpenAPI type and format. Use the table below as a reference when writing or reviewing migrations — if a column is declared with any of these methods, Geni will infer its schema automatically.

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Supported Migration Operations

Geni doesn’t just read the initial table definitions — it tracks the full chronological evolution of your schema across every migration file. The following operations are all recognized and applied in order:
  • Table creation — Schema::create('users', function (Blueprint $table) { ... })
  • Table alteration — Schema::table('users', function (Blueprint $table) { ... })
  • Adding columns — New columns added to existing tables via alteration migrations
  • Dropping columns — $table->dropColumn('legacy_field') removes the column from the in-memory schema
  • Renaming columns — $table->renameColumn('old', 'new') updates the column name in place
  • Dropping tables — Schema::drop('posts') and Schema::dropIfExists('tags') remove the table entirely
  • Renaming tables — Schema::rename('old_name', 'new_name') carries all columns forward under the new name
  • Macro expansion — id(), timestamps(), morphs(), nullableMorphs(), uuidMorphs(), and foreignIdFor() are all expanded into their constituent columns

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Schema Overrides Escape Hatch

Geni handles the full range of standard Laravel migration patterns, but some codebases include raw SQL statements or third-party macros that cannot be resolved through static parsing alone. For these cases, you can define manual overrides directly in config/geni.php.
config/geni.php
When Geni encounters a column it could not resolve from your migration files, it checks schema_overrides before falling back to a default type of string. Override entries are keyed as table.column and accept any valid OpenAPI primitive type (string, integer, number, boolean, object, array).
Use schema_overrides when your migrations contain DB::statement("ALTER TABLE ...") calls, rely on unresolvable third-party Blueprint macros, or when a column is managed entirely outside of Laravel’s migration system. For all standard Blueprint methods, no overrides are needed.