changing database structure without wiping

rubyonrails-talk
1

I've decided to make a major change in my application which affects more than 1 model. I don't want to wipe all the data though. Here's the scenario I'm in:

I have a Book model with a Chapter model. Book has many Chapters and Chapter belongs to Book. However, I want to add a Story model between them so that Book has many Stories and Stories has many Chapters. Is there a way I can make this change without wiping all my data?

2

What you’re asking should be totally doable via Migrations. See http://guides.rubyonrails.org/migrations.html.

Basically your flow should look something like:

  1. Create stories table.
  2. Add column chapters.story_id.
  3. Find all chapters.
  4. For each chapter:
  • Find or create the matching story. (Find params will depend on structure of story and chapter.)
  • story.book = chapter.book
  • chapter.story = story
  • chapter.book = nil
  • Remove column chapters.book_id. Could also write a one-off script to do this if you’re more comfortable, but leveraging ActiveRecord in this case will make life easier no matter where you decide to implement it.

HTH.