Laravel 5 dynamically run migrations

After publishing the package:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Packages\Namespace\ServiceProvider"

You can execute the migration using:

php artisan migrate

Laravel automatically keeps track of which migrations have been executed and runs new ones accordingly.

If you want to execute the migration from outside of the CLI, for example in a route, you can do so using the Artisan facade:

Artisan::call('migrate')

You can pass optional parameters such as force and path as an array to the second argument in Artisan::call.

Further reading:

• https://laravel.com/docs/5.1/artisan
• https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/migrations#running-migrations

Artisan::call('migrate', array('--path' => 'app/migrations'));

will work in Laravel 5, but you'll likely need to make a couple tweaks.

First, you need a use Artisan; line at the top of your file (where use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider... is), because of Laravel 5's namespacing. (You can alternatively do \Artisan::call - the \ is important).

You likely also need to do this:

Artisan::call('migrate', array('--path' => 'app/migrations', '--force' => true));

The --force is necessary because Laravel will, by default, prompt you for a yes/no in production, as it's a potentially destructive command. Without --force, your code will just sit there spinning its wheels (Laravel's waiting for a response from the CLI, but you're not in the CLI).

I'd encourage you to do this stuff somewhere other than the boot method of a service provider. These can be heavy calls (relying on both filesystem and database calls you don't want to make on every pageview). Consider an explicit installation console command or route instead.