testing json and enum column types with sqlite

Do you have a very good reason for using ENUM data types? They can be completely avoided under most scenarios. I would consider dropping them and going with a more standard approach using a reference table.

I could list a bunch of web links that speak about why you should avoid using ENUMs, but a google search would do that for you.

If all the reasons against using ENUM are not enough, then the fact you can't use an in-memory SQLite database should be reason enough to ditch them.

This is what I used and it worked great. I'm migrating 40+ tables that would take around a full minute to setup at the start of each testing session. This method makes it drastically faster. https://alexvanderbist.com/posts/2019/how-migrations-might-be-slowing-down-your-laravel-tests

thanks for the advice. i've reworked the application to replace all the database enum columns with reference tables and other data types. i can run sqlite now, but sqlite causes issues with php unit testing because of the way it retrieves integers so I'm still interested in seeing how i can speed things up using my sql.

i tried implementing the solution @fastsol mentioned my code is below. but i'm not seeing the performance benefit, i think this is because my overiding method is not being called by the trait. do you have any suggestions on how to correct it?

<?php

namespace Tests;

use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\TestCase as BaseTestCase;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\RefreshDatabase;

abstract class TestCase extends BaseTestCase
{
    use CreatesApplication;
    use RefreshDatabase;

    protected function refreshTestDatabase()
    {

        if (! RefreshDatabaseState::$migrated) {
            DB::unprepared(file_get_contents(database_path('migrations_2019_06_19.sql')));

            $this->artisan('migrate');

            $this->app[Kernel::class]->setArtisan(null);

            RefreshDatabaseState::$migrated = true;
        }

        $this->beginDatabaseTransaction();
    }

}