Question

I’m trying to update a field key from the following in the model:

name = models.CharField(max_length=255, unique = True)

to:

name = models.CharField(max_length=255, unique = False)

However I need to update the mysql db without losing any of the current data. How would I go about doing this? I tried $ python manage.py syncdb but it doesn’t seem to update the key.

Answer 1

That is because syncdb doesn’t do that. It only creates new tables, but doesn’t change the existing if your model changes.

On a dev environment, to update your database after changing your model, you can use python manage.py reset appname to empty out your database, and use syncdb again.

Otherwise, you have to use tools such as South. South was made to handle migrations, but also changing the database when the model changes.

There is also django-evolutions that does just what you want, but I still recommend South as its migrations features are almost always going to be of some use.