Can't figure out what's wrong with foreign key constraint statement

Question

This is the error message from show engine innodb status; when I try to create the table:

------------------------
LATEST FOREIGN KEY ERROR
------------------------
110628 16:56:07 Error in foreign key constraint of table test/menu_items:
foreign key(id_menu)
                references menus(id)
                on update cascade
                on delete cascade,
        foreign key(id_item)
                references items(id)
                on update cascade
                on delete cascade,
        primary key(id_menu, id_item)
) engine=InnoDB:
Cannot find an index in the referenced table where the
referenced columns appear as the first columns, or column types
in the table and the referenced table do not match for constraint.
Note that the internal storage type of ENUM and SET changed in
tables created with >= InnoDB-4.1.12, and such columns in old tables
cannot be referenced by such columns in new tables.
See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/innodb-foreign-key-constraints.html
for correct foreign key definition.

These are the relevant SQL statements:

create table if not exists menus (                                                                                            
    id              mediumint unsigned not null auto_increment,
    id_restaurant   mediumint unsigned not null,
    name            varchar(50) not null,
    description     varchar(255) default null,
    foreign key(id_restaurant)
        references restaurants(id)
        on update cascade
        on delete cascade,
    primary key(id)
) engine=InnoDB;

create table if not exists items (
    id              mediumint unsigned not null auto_increment,
    id_restaurant   mediumint unsigned not null,
    name            varchar(50),
    description     text,
    type            enum('appetizer','salad','soup','entree','dessert','drink','other'),
    price           decimal(4,2),
    foreign key(id_restaurant)
        references restaurants(id)
        on update cascade
        on delete cascade,
    primary key(id)
) engine=InnoDB;

create table if not exists order_items (
    id_order        bigint unsigned not null,
    id_item         mediumint unsigned not null,
    item_name       varchar(50),
    item_description    text,
    item_price      decimal(4,2),
    notes           varchar(1024),
    quantity        smallint unsigned,
    foreign key(id_order)
        references orders(id)
        on update cascade
        on delete cascade,
    foreign key(id_item)
        references items(id)
        on update cascade
        on delete cascade,
    primary key(id_order, id_item)
) engine=InnoDB;

Removing menu_items.id_menu and corresponding foreign key / primary key allows the SQL statements to be parsed properly.

Why can't I make a foreign key reference to menus(id) from menu_items?

Answer 1

You've got a mismatch of datatypes:

create table order_items (
    id_order bigint unsigned not null, -- BIGINT

create table items (
    id mediumint unsigned not null auto_increment, -- MEDIUMINT

but order_items.id_order references items.id, so they should be the same.

Try changing order_items id_order to medium int:

order_items (
    id_order        mediumint unsigned not null,