When you run node-pg-migrate create
a new migration file is created that looks like this:
exports.shorthands = undefined;
exports.up = function up(pgm) {};
exports.down = function down(pgm) {};
pgm
is a helper object that provides migration operations and run
is the callback to call when you are done.
shorthands
is optional for column type shorthands. You can specify custom types which will be expanded to column definition
(e.g. for exports.shorthands = { id: { type: 'uuid', primaryKey: true }, createdAt: { type: 'timestamp', notNull: true, default: new PgLiteral('current_timestamp') } };
it will in pgm.createTable('test', { id: 'id', createdAt: 'createdAt' });
produce SQL CREATE TABLE "test" ("id" uuid PRIMARY KEY, "createdAt" timestamp DEFAULT current_timestamp NOT NULL);
).
These shorthands are inherited from previous migrations. You can override/change value by simply defining new value for given shorthand name,
if will be used in current and all following migrations (until changed again).
IMPORTANT
Calling the migration functions on pgm
doesn't actually migrate your database. These functions just add sql commands to a stack that is run.
If exports.down
is not present in a migration, node-pg-migrate will try to automatically infer the operations that make up the down migration by reversing the operations of the up migration. Only some operations have automatically inferrable equivalents (details below on each operation). Sometimes, migrations are destructive and cannot be rolled back. In this case, you can set exports.down = false
to tell node-pg-migrate that the down migration is impossible.
In some cases, you may want to perform some async operation during a migration, for example fetching some information from an external server, or inserting some data into the database. To make a migration block operate in async mode, just add another callback argument to the function signature. However, be aware that NONE of the pgm operations will be executed until run()
is called. Here's an example:
exports.up = function up(pgm, run) {
doSomethingAsync(function() {
run();
});
};
Another way how to perform some async operation is to return Promise from up
or down
function. Example:
exports.up = function(pgm) {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
// doSomethingAsync
resolve();
});
};
or
exports.up = async pgm => {
// doSomethingAsync
};
Instead of passing string as name to pgm
functions, you can pass an object with keys schema
and name
. E.g.
pgm.createTable({ schema: 'my_schema', name: 'my_table_name' }, { id: 'serial' });
will generate
CREATE TABLE "my_schema"."my_table_name" (
"id" serial
);
type Name = string | { schema: string; name: string };
node-pg-migrate
automatically checks if no other migration is running. To do so, it uses an
advisory lock
(see #239).
Lock is held for duration of DB session, so if migration scripts hangs up, you need to kill it,
before running another migration script.
The pgm
object that is passed to each up/down block has many different operations available. Each operation is simply a function that generates some sql and stores it in the current pgm context.
By default, all migrations will be run in a transaction. To disable transactions for a specific migration, call pgm.noTransaction()
This is required for some SQL operations that cannot be run within a transaction. It should be used carefully.