Opened 8 years ago

Closed 7 years ago

#27860 closed Bug (fixed)

Changing a CharField to a ForeignKey crashes when migrating in PostgreSQL

Reported by: Daniel Quinn Owned by: Mariusz Felisiak
Component: Migrations Version: 1.10
Severity: Normal Keywords: PostgreSQL
Cc: Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: yes Needs documentation: no
Needs tests: no Patch needs improvement: no
Easy pickings: no UI/UX: no

Description (last modified by Daniel Quinn)

If I have a model that looks like this:

class MyModel(models.Model):
    my_field = models.CharField(max_length=128, db_index=True)

makemigrations will create a migration that looks like this:

        migrations.CreateModel(
            name='MyModel',
            fields=[
                ('id', models.AutoField(auto_created=True, primary_key=True, serialize=False, verbose_name='ID')),
                ('my_field', models.CharField(db_index=True, max_length=128)),
            ],
        ),

However, if I later change the field to a ForeignKey:

class MyOtherModel(models.Model):
    stuff = models.CharField(max_length=128)

class MyModel(models.Model):
    my_field = models.ForeignKey("alpha.MyOtherModel", blank=True)

makemigrations will create this:

        migrations.AlterField(
            model_name='mymodel',
            name='my_field',
            field=models.ForeignKey(blank=True, on_delete=django.db.models.deletion.CASCADE, to='alpha.MyOtherModel'),
        ),

...which explodes in PostgreSQL (but not SQLite or MySQL) with this:

psycopg2.ProgrammingError: operator class "varchar_pattern_ops" does not accept data type integer

The fix (at least for my case) was to manually break up the AlterField into separate RemoveField and AddField steps like this:

        migrations.RemoveField(
            model_name='mymodel',
            name='my_field',
        ),
        migrations.AddField(
            model_name='mymodel',
            name='my_field',
            field=models.ForeignKey(blank=True, on_delete=django.db.models.deletion.CASCADE, to='alpha.MyOtherModel'),
        ),

I ran into this on my own GPL project, and the issue history wherein we found and fixed the problem is here: https://github.com/danielquinn/paperless/issues/183

Change History (7)

comment:1 by Tim Graham, 8 years ago

I couldn't reproduce a problem with these final models:

class CharPK(models.Model):
    id = models.CharField(primary_key=True, max_length=128)

class MyModel(models.Model):
    my_field = models.ForeignKey(CharPK, max_length=128, on_delete=models.CASCADE)

Does "alpha.MyOtherModel" have a CharField primary key?

I'm not sure what the proper resolution would be here, considering that automatically generating RemoveField / AddField would be data loss operations.

comment:2 by Daniel Quinn, 8 years ago

Description: modified (diff)

alpha.MyOtherModel is using a default numeric key. Sorry, I should have included that in the ticket and so I've modified it to include the MyOtherModel class.

The problem is that migrations is doing an alter for a field that changed not just from a CharField to a ForeignKeyField but rather to a foreign key of a different type. SQLite and MySQL somehow didn't have a problem with this, but PostgreSQL exploded.

Perhaps a solution would be a warning stage not unlike the prompt you get when trying to add a field with no default= value? Something like:

It looks like you've changed a CharField to a ForeignKey of a different type. This will generate an AddField and RemoveField. Is that cool with you?

comment:3 by Tim Graham, 8 years ago

Summary: Changing a CharField to a ForeignKey explodes when migrating in PostgreSQLChanging a CharField to a ForeignKey crashes when migrating in PostgreSQL
Triage Stage: UnreviewedAccepted
Type: UncategorizedBug

It looks like the varchar_pattern_ops index needs to be dropped before altering the field.

comment:4 by Mariusz Felisiak, 8 years ago

Owner: changed from nobody to Mariusz Felisiak
Status: newassigned

comment:5 by Mariusz Felisiak, 8 years ago

Has patch: set

comment:6 by Tim Graham <timograham@…>, 8 years ago

In 6b47431:

Refs #27860 -- Simplified deleting indexes on PostgreSQL using "IF EXISTS".

comment:7 by GitHub <noreply@…>, 7 years ago

Resolution: fixed
Status: assignedclosed

In 91b2bc3:

Fixed #27860 -- Dropped varchar_pattern_ops/text_pattern_ops index before altering char/text field in PostgreSQL.

Thanks Tim Graham for the review.

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