Virtual columns are not physically stored in the database but are calculated on-the-fly. They are particularly useful when working with JSON columns, as they allow you to extract and utilize data without duplicating it.
Laravel Migration File
Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->id();
$table->json('meta')->nullable();
$table->string('author_id')->nullable()->virtualAs("json_unquote(json_extract(meta, '$.author_id'))");
$table->string('slug')->nullable()->virtualAs("json_unquote(json_extract(meta, '$.slug'))");
});These virtual columns do not take up extra storage space but are accessible as part of queries.
Table Structure
| id | meta | author_id | slug |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | {“author_id”: “12345”, “slug”: “my-first-post”} | 12345 | my-first-post |
By using virtual columns, author_id and slug are extracted dynamically from the JSON column meta.