DataMapper.auto_upgrade! Question

gistfile1.rb

# Departamento Version 1.0
class Departamento
  include DataMapper::Resource
  
  property :id, Serial
  property :nombre, String, :index => true

end

# Then I run rackup with DataMapper.auto_upgrade!, which creates the tables with the structure above.

# What if I change something in the structure, eg. 


# Departamento Version 1.0
class Departamento
  include DataMapper::Resource
  
  property :id, Serial
  property :nombre, String, :index => true, :required => true

end

# Then I run rackup again. Will DataMapper.auto_upgrade!, run the proper SQL statements to change the column? 

The DataMapper.auto_upgrade! call is currently additive only. It adds new tables, columns and indexes but does not change anything pre-existing. In the future it may try to identify "safe" changes it can make without causing an exception and perform those.

Please note though, this might not be a "safe" change. If the table has NULL values for any columns it may not always be safe to change it to a NOT NULL column without providing a default value. MySQL will probably silently coerce those fields to an empty string but other databases may explode if you try to do this.

One idea I had was to inspect the data with queries before event starting on a conversion to make sure data won't be silently truncated or information lost. In this case we'd do a SELECT COUNT(*) FROM departmentos WHERE nombre IS NULL and if it returned 0 we'd apply the change, otherwise we'd raise an exception telling you to either supply a default value or fix the data beforehand.

The typical use case for developing locally is to use DataMapper.auto_migrate! in combination with a seed script, so you can just blow away the local database then repopulate it using the seed script. You never really want to use that method or DataMapper.auto_upgrate! in production though; you would write a dm-migrations migration script and apply it when you deploy your app.

Great, this makes sense. It just wasn't clear enough in the getting started page.

I like your idea about inspecting the data and then allowing or not an auto_upgrade!

Thanks!