Getting "Unknown primary key for table" while the ID is there

Question

I've been debugging this strange problem of Rails giving me "Unknown primary key for table...", even when the table's ID is there.

I've copied the database from one heroku app to another, on the original databse there is no problem and the new one gives me a db error.

This is the error:

ProductsController# (ActionView::Template::Error) "Unknown primary key for table collections in model Collection."

/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activerecord-3.2.13/lib/active_record/reflection.rb:366:in `primary_key'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activerecord-3.2.13/lib/active_record/reflection.rb:480:in `association_primary_key'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activerecord-3.2.13/lib/active_record/associations/association_scope.rb:58:in `block in add_constraints'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activerecord-3.2.13/lib/active_record/associations/association_scope.rb:39:in `each'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activerecord-3.2.13/lib/active_record/associations/association_scope.rb:39:in `each_with_index'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activerecord-3.2.13/lib/active_record/associations/association_scope.rb:39:in `add_constraints'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activerecord-3.2.13/lib/active_record/associations/association_scope.rb:31:in `scope'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activerecord-3.2.13/lib/active_record/associations/association.rb:98:in `association_scope'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activerecord-3.2.13/lib/active_record/associations/association.rb:87:in `scoped'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activerecord-3.2.13/lib/active_record/associations/collection_association.rb:573:in `first_or_last'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activerecord-3.2.13/lib/active_record/associations/collection_association.rb:105:in `last'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activerecord-3.2.13/lib/active_record/associations/collection_proxy.rb:46:in `last'
/app/app/helpers/likes_helper.rb:62:in `significant_liker'

The line that causes it:

product.collections.last.try :user

and the table:

d8apjspa441pad=> \d collections
                                     Table "public.collections"
     Column     |          Type          |                        Modifiers                         
----------------+------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------
 id             | integer                | not null default nextval('collections_id_seq'::regclass)
 name           | character varying(255) | 
 user_id        | integer                | 
 permalink      | character varying(255) | 
 category_id    | integer                | 
 products_count | integer                | 
 is_featured    | boolean                | 
Indexes:
    "index_lists_on_user_id_and_permalink" UNIQUE, btree (user_id, permalink)

Any idea why this might happen?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Seems primary key is missing for the table collections.

Prior to Rails 3.2, set the primary key in model like

class Collection < ActiveRecord::Base
  set_primary_key "my_existing_column"
end

In Rails 3.2+ and Rails 4, set the primary key in model like

class Collection < ActiveRecord::Base
  self.primary_key = "my_existing_column"
end

OR

We can alter the table and set the primary key for id like

Create a migration file to set the primary key

class AddPrimaryKeyToCollections < ActiveRecord::Migration
 def change
   execute "ALTER TABLE collections ADD PRIMARY KEY (id);"
 end
end

Answer 2

I was having a similar problem and this was the only page I could find. So just in case it will be of help to anyone else...

I started suddenly getting missing primary key messages on a couple tables. I'm guessing, but not sure, that this started happening after pushing data (pg_dump local, heroku pg:restore)

The primary keys in question were both on tables that had been renamed so that the pkey name did not match the table name--but on the other hand lots of other renamed tables were in the same boat and did not have problems.

Anyway, at one point in my flailing around I tried uploading another dump file and I noticed some complaints on the offending indices. First it would try to delete them and complain that it couldn't because they did not exist. Later it would try to create them and complain that it couldn't because they already existed.

Very annoying considering that pkey info doesn't show up in schema.rb and is supposed to 'just work', right?

Anyway, what worked for me (and thus the reason I'm posting) is to do a heroku pg:reset and then load the dump again. Side note, I got 'internal server error' the first two times I tried heroku pg:reset. But later I tried again and it worked.

Answer 3

TL;DR: try restarting the app.

heroku restart

I recently encountered this error: "Unknown primary key for table", and like the question asker, it appeared after copying a database to a Heroku app.

The copied database had no errors, so I was confident the table and primary key were fine.

I tried a few suggestions on this page, including starting from scratch with a heroku pg:reset, new pg_dump of the old database, and pgbackups:restore into the new database, then running migrations and seeding... nothing worked.

What finally solved my problem was restarting the app. The new app had many database migrations, and restarting the app reloaded the schema and picked up the changes. This page from Heroku's documentation explains:

Running Rake Commands

After running a migration you’ll want to restart your app with heroku restart to reload the schema and pickup any schema changes.

Answer 4

I was restoring database dump from heroku to my local system and was getting this error..

ActiveRecord::UnknownPrimaryKey: ActiveRecord::UnknownPrimaryKey

I was restoring on existing database, so I dropped the database, created new database and then restore the dump and it worked for me

Answer 5

What helped for me (happened on heroku after a db restore) is reindexing the primary key index:

reindex index $primary_key_index_name