On table or column name change, rename contstraint names to match new name

Currently Hasura does not update constraint names when changing a table or column name.

Consider having an initial table called clients with an id and email column, id is the primary-key and biginit unique autoincrementing, email is text and unique.

Hasura will show the constraints on this table as the following:

Primary key

• id - clients_pkey

Unique keys

• email - clients_email_key

Now rename the table to users and the constraint names will not change.

Perhaps they should be updated to keep semantic value, although it’s not breaking anything so this is probably(?) a minor priority change.

Example SQL to tie into changes:

ALTER TABLE name RENAME CONSTRAINT constraint_name TO new_constraint_name;

Also credit to elitan#8042 for suggestions relating to this issue.

[shakahl]

Hi @tsujp The constraint names are something that the GraphQL engine entirely depends on Postgres. It is hard to update the constraint names explicitly for renamed tables and columns. You can run ALTER TABLE .. in SQL section of the console and the server auto-updates the required metadata.

If you feel it is good to have an edit option in console UI for constraint names, let us know in the comment. 🙂

An edit button would be great there!

[Varun-Choudhary]

I came into an issue where I renamed a table to better fit the data that is in the table. Then I later realized that I wanted to restructure the data so I added another table (with the name of the table before it was renamed). I then tried adding a primary key on the table but it was saying the key already existed.

So, I was not able to add a key to this table. I then figured out that the key was already in use in the renamed table so I deleted the key and re-added it so it would reflect the table. I was then able to add the key to the newly created table.

Steps I took:

• Initial creation: items
• Rename: items -> user_items
• Re-create: items
• Add new primary key to items – Throws error

Hey @TheColorRed, thanks for reporting the issue. This issue is there till v2.12.0 but it is resolved now. Initial creation: items, let the constraint_name is items_pkey Rename items -> user_items Re-create: items Add a new primary key to items – this will add a primary with constraint name items_pkey1