Question

I generated a migration that adds a column called encrypted_password to the users table present in my databse. This was generated automatically by rails using the command:

rails generate migration add_password_to_users encrypted_password:string

class AddPasswordToUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    add_column :users, :encrypted_password, :string
  end

  def self.down
    remove_column :users, :encrypted_password
  end
end 

I’m trying to remove and remake the encrypted_password column in the users_table, so this is what I’m doing:

rake db:migrate:down VERSION=20110712172013 (thats the timestamp of the migration)
rake db:migrate
(Ive also tried rake db:migrate:redo VERSION=20110712172013)

I get this error:
SQLite3::SQLException: duplicate column name: encrypted_password: ALTER TABLE “users” ADD “encrypted_password” varchar(255)

So for some reason, the down migration isn’t really removing the column. Anyone have an idea why?

Answer 1

I just whipped out sqlitebrowser and deleted the encrypted_password column manually. That fixed the problem. I tried migrating up and down after that too, it all works fine. Thanks Chris.