How to convert primary key from integer to serial?

Question

In a Postgres 9.3 table I have an integer as primary key with automatic sequence to increment, but I have reached the maximum for integer. How to convert it from integer to serial?
I tried:

ALTER TABLE my_table ALTER COLUMN id SET DATA TYPE bigint;

But the same does not work with the data type serial instead of bigint. Seems like I cannot convert to serial?

Answer 1

serial is a pseudo data type, not an actual data type. It's an integer underneath with some additional DDL commands executed automatically:

1. Create a SEQUENCE (with matching name by default).
2. Set the column NOT NULL and the default to draw from that sequence.
3. Make the column "own" the sequence.

Details:

• Safely rename tables using serial primary key columns

A bigserial is the same, built around a bigint column. You want bigint, but you already achieved that. To transform an existing serial column into a bigserial (or smallserial), all you need to do is to ALTER the data type of the column. Sequences are generally based on bigint, so the same sequence can be used for any integer type.

To "change" a bigint into a bigserial or an integer into a serial, you just have to do the rest by hand:

• Creating a PostgreSQL sequence to a field (which is not the ID of the record)

The actual data type is still integer / bigint. Some clients like pgAdmin will display the data type serial in the reverse engineered CREATE TABLE script, if all criteria for a serial are met.