how does sails.js handle database migrations when working with a schema database?

Question

I'm currently using postgresql for a database.

I come from more of a rails background where we create a migration and then run rake db:migrate to migrate the database.

How can I do something similar in sails.js? Do I need to?

Answer 1

With an unmodified config/models.js file each time you sails lift it will prompt you for one of 3 possible options, detailed in the docs here:

1. safe -- No migrations are run
2. alter -- Sails will attempt to migrate the data as intelligently as possible
3. drop -- Sails will drop the database and run all of the migrations. Equivalent to rake db: drop db:migrate

It's recommended that you only use safe in production, and run you migrations either by hand, or using one of the following modules (non-exhaustive list):

• https://github.com/building5/sails-db-migrate
• https://github.com/BlueHotDog/sails-migrations

In development however you're generally safe to modify your config/models.js file to set the value of the migrate attribute to the alter setting.