Rails Migration: Bigint on PostgreSQL seems to be failing?

Question

Trying to create a table with a bigint column creates a standard integer column instead. What could be going wrong? I don't know where to start looking.

I'm using this in the migration:

create_table :table_name do |t|
  t.integer :really_big_int, limit: 8
end

I'm using Ruby 1.9.2, PostgreSQL 9.0.3 and Rails 3.0.9. I've dropped the database and ran the migrations several times and it still doesn't create the bigint column.

Very strange. How are you determining that it creates an integer column—by looking at schema.rb or your PG schema? — dnch, Aug 15 '11 at 05:17
I'm checking on both places. I just solved it using a string column, although I'm still really curious to know why it wouldn't work. — Lonecat, Sep 14 '11 at 04:11
Any update on this, it seems that :limit => 8 is not creating bigint column in Postgres. — Kumar Deepak, Jan 15 '12 at 18:17

score 28 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 01 '13 at 05:50

28

For some reason the create table doesn't like bigint. You can, however do it with add_columm using the bigint data type:

add_column :table_name, :really_big_int, :bigint

Then you don't need that limit stuff.

edited Oct 01 '13 at 05:50

Stuart M

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answered May 23 '12 at 00:32

Chris Barretto

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Using Rails 3.2.2 and the `pg` gem (version 0.14.0) this works. Haven't checked in older versions. – Lonecat Dec 20 '12 at 20:30

score 23 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 02 '13 at 17:54

23

This works in Rails 4

t.column :really_big_int, :bigint

answered Nov 02 '13 at 17:54

lstefani

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score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 23 '16 at 21:25

8

Rails 5.0.0.1 it works:

  def change
    create_table :huge do |t|  
      t.integer :big_bastard, limit: 8
    end
  end

answered Sep 23 '16 at 21:25

rmcsharry

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score 5 · Answer 4 · answered May 30 '16 at 12:43

5

In rails 4.2 + you can use like:

create_table :table_name do |t|
   t.bigint :really_big_int
end

answered May 30 '16 at 12:43

Thorin

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 02 '13 at 23:25

I was able to create a bigint using t.column. This is useful if you want to control the column order in the table.

create_table :table_name do |t|
  t.string :other_column
  t.column :really_big_int, :bigint
  .
  .
  t.timestamps
end

I'm using Rails 3.2.12 with pg gem version 0.15.1 (x86-mingw32).

Rails Migration: Bigint on PostgreSQL seems to be failing?

5 Answers5

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