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Asked: 2026-05-20T04:52:22+00:00

I have made a huge mistake. Initially I created my model with a field

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I have made a huge mistake.

Initially I created my model with a field called start_date and made it a string to keep track of event dates.

Now I’m realizing it would be nice to have this field as a date type so I could do calculations like find events where start_date is between today and 1 month from now.

This issue is I already have 500 records so starting over would suck….

The format of the start_date field is in a rails compatible type ” 2011-02-21 22:00:00 ” but its just a string…

Is there anything I can do?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You could try just doing an EXPORT on the table (making sure to only export data, do not include CREATE and/or DROP table commands).

    Create a migration to change the datatype

    TRUNCATE the table

    IMPORT the data

    Since the column is now a date field, it should parse the input of a string just fine, considering that’s what you provide it anyway

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