Dropping column with foreign key Laravel error: General error: 1025 Error on rename

You can use this:

$table->dropForeign(['pick_detail_id']);
$table->dropColumn('pick_detail_id');

If you take a peak at dropForeign source, it will build the foreign key index name for you if you pass the column name as an array.

It turns out; when you create a foreign key like this:

$table->integer('pick_detail_id')->unsigned();
$table->foreign('pick_detail_id')->references('id')->on('pick_details');

Laravel uniquely names the foreign key reference like this:

<table_name>_<foreign_table_name>_<column_name>_foreign
despatch_discrepancies_pick_detail_id_foreign (in my case)

Therefore, when you want to drop a column with foreign key reference, you have to do it like this:

$table->dropForeign('despatch_discrepancies_pick_detail_id_foreign');
$table->dropColumn('pick_detail_id');

Update:

Laravel 4.2+ introduces a new naming convention:

<table_name>_<column_name>_foreign

I had multiple foreign keys in my table and then I had to remove foreign key constraints one by one by passing column name as index of the array in down method:

public function up()
{
    Schema::table('offices', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->unsignedInteger('country_id')->nullable();
        $table->foreign('country_id')
            ->references('id')
            ->on('countries')
            ->onDelete('cascade');

        $table->unsignedInteger('stateprovince_id')->nullable();
        $table->foreign('stateprovince_id')
            ->references('id')
            ->on('stateprovince')
            ->onDelete('cascade');
        $table->unsignedInteger('city_id')->nullable();
        $table->foreign('city_id')
            ->references('id')
            ->on('cities')
            ->onDelete('cascade');
    });
}

/**
 * Reverse the migrations.
 *
 * @return void
 */
public function down()
{
    Schema::table('offices', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->dropForeign(['country_id']);
        $table->dropForeign(['stateprovince_id']);
        $table->dropForeign(['city_id']);
        $table->dropColumn(['country_id','stateprovince_id','city_id']);
    });
} 

Using below statement does not work

$table->dropForeign(['country_id','stateprovince_id','city_id']); 

Because dropForeign does not consider them seperate columns that we want to remove. So we have to drop them one by one.