Default value of Point type

Question

In Laravel migrations, what should I use as the default value of Point type column? I originally wanted to keep it NULL but then I read that:

Columns in spatial indexes must be declared NOT NULL.

So what should I use as the default value of my column and how do I specify that in migration, to represent NULL, something like 0,0 or -1,-1?

$table->point('location')->default(???);

UPDATE

Doing more research, I found an even bigger issue. MySQL doesn't allow specifying default value for POINT type column. So I must insert a NULL-equivalent at INSERT time. What would be the correct value for this purpose?

Answer 1

I don't know if it is you case, but if you are trying to add a column to an existing table, and then add a spatial index to that on a migration, the way I find to address this in MySQL was not an elegant solution, but worked:

Schema::table('table', function(Blueprint $table)
{
    // Add the new nullable column
    $table->point('column')->nullable();
});
// You must separate this to ensure the execution order
Schema::table('table', function(Blueprint $table)
{
    // Insert the dummy values on the column
    DB::statement("UPDATE `table` SET `column` = POINT(0,90);");
    // Set the column to not null
    DB::statement("ALTER TABLE `table` CHANGE `column` `column` POINT NOT NULL;");

    // Finally add the spatial index
    $table->spatialIndex('column');
});