Support UUID and Bigint model IDs in model_has_roles via string-based model_morph_key

[tikrack]

Support UUID and Bigint in spatie/laravel-permission model_id

🐛 Problem Overview

When using spatie/laravel-permission in projects with UUID-based primary keys (such as users.id being a uuid), a type mismatch error occurs due to the default database migration assuming model_id is an unsignedBigInteger.

❌ Example Error

SQLSTATE[22P02]: Invalid text representation: 7 ERROR: 
invalid input syntax for type bigint: "01984de3-23bb-7189-9ff3-c4a343bebb33"

This happens because the default migrations define model_id (via model_morph_key) as:

$table->unsignedBigInteger($columnNames['model_morph_key']);

This causes a fatal mismatch when UUIDs are used.

---

✅ Recommended Solution

Change the column type for model_morph_key (model_id) to string instead of unsignedBigInteger.

✅ Updated Migration Snippet

Replace:

$table->unsignedBigInteger($columnNames['model_morph_key']);

With:

$table->string($columnNames['model_morph_key']); // supports UUID & bigint

This allows UUIDs like 01984de3-23bb-7189-9ff3-c4a343bebb33 and also integer-based IDs like 1 or 42.

---

💡 Why This Matters

This allows spatie/laravel-permission to:

• Work seamlessly with models using UUIDs
• Maintain compatibility with bigint-based models
• Avoid needing multiple permission tables
• Support real polymorphism across model key types

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🧩 Alternative Options

If you're using only UUIDs, you could define the column as uuid instead:

$table->uuid($columnNames['model_morph_key']);

However, this won't support bigint IDs, so string is the most flexible option.

---

🙏 Final Note

Thanks again for the amazing package. We hope this improvement can be considered to support more Laravel use cases out-of-the-box.

@tikrack

[tikrack]

If you're open to it, I'd be happy to help make this package more flexible to support both UUID and bigint-based models out-of-the-box.

Whether through a pull request or contributing on specific parts, feel free to reach out — I'd be glad to collaborate and ensure smooth support for both ID types in future versions.

[angeljqv]

Feel free to do the PR, it would be interesting to review the solution you propose.
Don't forget ->nullable(false)

laravel-permission/tests/TestCase.php

Lines 246 to 264 in a028147

	$migration = str_replace(
	[
	'(\'id\'); // permission id',
	'(\'id\'); // role id',
	'references(\'id\') // permission id',
	'references(\'id\') // role id',
	'bigIncrements',
	'unsignedBigInteger($pivotRole)',
	'unsignedBigInteger($pivotPermission)',
	],
	[
	'(\'permission_test_id\');',
	'(\'role_test_id\');',
	'references(\'permission_test_id\')',
	'references(\'role_test_id\')',
	'uuid',
	'uuid($pivotRole)->nullable(false)',
	'uuid($pivotPermission)->nullable(false)',
	],