Laravel: renaming database table breaks functionality - laravel

Question

I'm still quite new to Laravel, Eloquent and Artisan.
What I'm trying to do is pretty easy: I want to create a new Eloquent model AboutUs, along with a migration file to create the table about_us.
I run the following command:
PHP artisan make:model AboutUs -m
This generates the model and migration file, however, the migration file is named '2017_07_18_211959_create_about_uses_table.php', automatically adding the unnecessary 'es' to 'us', and creating a table 'aboutuses' instead of 'about_us'.
If I manually change the migration file like so:
<?php
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
class CreateAboutUsTable extends Migration
{
/**
* Run the migrations.
*
* #return void
*/
public function up()
{
Schema::create('about_us', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments('id');
$table->timestamps();
$table->boolean('active');
$table->string('title')->nullable();
$table->text('text')->nullable();
});
}
/**
* Reverse the migrations.
*
* #return void
*/
public function down()
{
Schema::dropIfExists('about_us');
}
}
The model like this:
<?php
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class AboutUs extends Model
{
protected $fillable = ['id', 'active', 'title', 'text'];
public static function getAboutUs()
{
return AboutUs::find(1);
}
public function postAboutUs($session, $active, $title, $text)
{
$aboutUs = $session->get('about_us');
array_push($aboutUs, ['active' => $active, 'title' => $title, 'text' => $text,]);
$session->put('about_us', $aboutUs);
}
}
Then run the migration:
PHP artisan migrate
The database table 'about_us' is created correctly, but when I insert a row in the table and attempt to use getAboutUs, it crashes, the laravel.log stating that:
local.ERROR: exception 'PDOException' with message 'SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table or view not found: 1146 Table 'ID226233_db.aboutuses' doesn't exist' in C:\PHP Projects\xxx\vendor\doctrine\dbal\lib\Doctrine\DBAL\Driver\PDOConnection.php:77
I can see that there are still references to "aboutuses" in the autoload_classmap and autoload_static files. Changing this manually doesn't fix the issue, nor does running:
composer dump autoload
Next, I tried to simply not rename the table, but run the migration to create the initial "aboutuses" table. This fixed the functionality, as the model now works correctly. However, if I now add a new migration with:
Schema::rename('aboutuses', 'about_us');
This renames the table in the DB, but not in the autoload files or wherever else, resulting in broken functionality.
Surely there must be an easier way to either:
create a model with migration file with a FIXED name, instead of it
automatically changing the name by adding an unnecessary suffix.
rename a model and change the necessary files to prevent the model
from breaking.
Could anyone point me in the right direction before I lose my mind over this? :)

Answer 1

You can specify a custom table name in your Eloquent model class. Here is the example from the docs:
<?php namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class Flight extends Model
{
/**
* The table associated with the model.
*
* #var string
*/
protected $table = 'my_flights';
}
Source: https://laravel.com/docs/5.4/eloquent#eloquent-model-conventions
Hope that helps.