Migrations for a new database and Hasura instance

This guide will help you if you are about to start setting up your schema from scratch. You can use migrations to help track the database and GraphQL schema changes.

Step 0: Disable the console on the server

To use migrations effectively, the console on the server (which is served at /console) should be disabled and all changes must go through the console served by the CLI. Otherwise, changes could be made through the server console and they will not be tracked by migrations.

So, the first step is to disable the console served by the GraphQL engine server. In order to do that, remove the --enable-console flag from the command that starts the server or set the following environment variable to false:

HASURA_GRAPHQL_ENABLE_CONSOLE=false

Note

If this is set in YAML, make sure you quote the word false, i.e. HASURA_GRAPHQL_ENABLE_CONSOLE: "false".

Step 1: Install the Hasura CLI

Follow the instructions in Installing the Hasura CLI.

Step 2: Set up a project directory

Execute the command below. For the endpoint referred here, let’s say you’ve deployed the GraphQL engine on Heroku, then this endpoint is: https://my-graphql.herokuapp.com. In case you’ve deployed this using Docker, the URL might be http://xx.xx.xx.xx:8080. This endpoint should not contain the v1/graphql API path. It should just be the hostname and any sub-path if it is configured that way.

hasura init --directory my-project --endpoint http://my-graphql.herokuapp.com

cd my-project

This will create a new directory called my-project with a config.yaml file and a migrations directory. This directory structure is mandatory to use Hasura migrations. You can commit this directory to version control.

Note

In case there is an admin secret set, you can set it as an environment variable HASURA_GRAPHQL_ADMIN_SECRET=<your-admin-secret on the local machine and the CLI will use it. You can also use it as a flag to CLI: --admin-secret "<your-admin-secret>".

Step 3: Open the console from the CLI

Instead of using the console at http://my-graphql.herokuapp.com/console you should now use the console by running:

# in project dir
hasura console

Step 4: Add a new table and see how a migration is added

As you use the Hasura console UI to make changes to your schema, migration files are automatically generated in the migrations/ directory in your project.

Step 5: Apply the migrations on another instance of the GraphQL engine

Apply all migrations present in the migrations/ directory on a new instance at http://another-graphql-instance.herokuapp.com:

# in project dir
hasura migrate apply --endpoint http://another-graphql-instance.herokuapp.com

In case you need an automated way of applying the migrations, take a look at the CLI-Migrations Docker image, which can start the GraphQL engine after automatically applying the migrations which are mounted into a directory.

Step 6: Check the status of migrations

# in project dir
hasura migrate status

This command will print out each migration version present in the migrations directory and the ones applied on the database, along with a status text.

For example,

$ hasura migrate status
VERSION        SOURCE STATUS  DATABASE STATUS
1550925483858  Present        Present
1550931962927  Present        Present
1550931970826  Present        Present

Such a migration status indicates that there are 3 migration versions in the local directory and all of them are applied on the database.

If SOURCE STATUS indicates Not Present, it means that the migration version is present on the server, but not on the current user’s local directory. This typically happens if multiple people are collaborating on a project and one of the collaborators forgot to pull the latest changes which included the latest migration files or another collaborator forgot to push the latest migration files that were applied on the database. Syncing of the files would fix the issue.

If DATABASE STATUS indicates Not Present, it denotes that there are new migration versions in the local directory which are not applied on the database yet. Executing a migrate apply would take care of such scenarios.

« previous | next »
Want to contribute or report missing content?

Powered by Sphinx. | Copyright © 2020 Hasura.