Question

i get the error

PGError: ERROR:  type modifier is not allowed for type "text"
LINE 1: ...ng(255), "desc" character varying(255), "content" text(255),...

when i do a heroku run rake db:reset

i understand that postgresql needs an unlimited type for ‘text’ and in my latest migration file i have…

class ChangeLessonsTable < ActiveRecord::Migration
    def change
        change_table :lessons do |t|
            t.change        :content, :text, :limit => nil
        end
    end
end

i still keep getting the error though. any ideas why? i ran rake db:reset, rake db:migrate, and git push to make sure my local db changed. then i ran git heroku push and heroku run rake db:reset but i keep getting that error. am i missing something? thanks

Answer 1

You should be able to leave off the :limit entirely:

class ChangeLessonsTable < ActiveRecord::Migration
    def change
        change_table :lessons do |t|
            t.change :content, :text
        end
    end
end

If that doesn’t work then you could try separate up and down actions:

def up
    change_column :lessons, :content, :text
end
def down
    change_column :lessons, :content, :string
end

As an aside, if you’re targeting PostgreSQL you should just use :text and forget about the :string (AKA varchar) column type, PostgreSQL treats them all the same internally. The only time you should bother with varchar/:string is when your data integrity requires a specific upper limit on the string size.