Laravel - fix "1071 Specified key was too long; max key length is 1000" error

If you use Laravel in combination with an older version of MySQL, you may see an error like “1071 Specified key was too long; max key length is 1000” when running migrations.

To fix this error, you have to modify app/Providers/AppServiceProvider.php:

<?php

namespace App\Providers;

use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema; // add this line

class AppServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    /**
     * Bootstrap any application services.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function boot()
    {
    	Schema::defaultStringLength(191); // add this line
    }

    /**
     * Register any application services.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function register()
    {
        //
    }
}

Add both lines, marked with the comment “add this line”.

After that, modify your config/database.php and change the mysql setting

'engine' => null,

to

'engine' => 'InnoDB ROW_FORMAT=DYNAMIC',

Last step is to clear config and cache. Run this commands from your terminal:

php artisan cache:clear
php artisan config:clear

Now, you should be able to run your migrations:

php artisan migrate