Magento – Is It Safe to Modify Database Table Column Datatype Directly?

databasemodule

I am able to change Catalog Price Rules' from_date and to_date from "date" datatype into "datetime", by overriding the classes:

Mage_Adminhtml_Block_Promo_Catalog_Edit_Tab_Main
Mage_Adminhtml_Promo_CatalogController
Mage_CatalogRule_Model_Rule

and changing the datatype of the table columns catalogrule.from_date and catalogrule.to_date into "datetime".

Is doing the latter safe? Or should I somehow create or modify some files, maybe in an sql folder somewhere, e.g. my module's? Or could anyone point me to some resources I can peruse to achieve such? I just want to do this properly.

Best Answer

You can change it manually but then you have to change it on your every Magento instance. (staging, live).
The safest way to do it is to create a module (use the same module that holds the class rewrites) and include in your module an upgrade script that changes the column.
Something like this:

$this->run("
ALTER TABLE `{$this->getTable('catalogrule/rule')}` CHANGE `from_date` `from_date` DATETIME NULL DEFAULT NULL
");
$this->run("
ALTER TABLE `{$this->getTable('catalogrule/rule')}` CHANGE `to_date` `to_date` DATETIME NULL DEFAULT NULL
");

This way you can make your changes portable.

Related Solutions

Magento 1.9 – Is It Safe to Change Website ID and Store ID Directly in customer_entity Table

As long as those customers hasn't placed any orders, I think it should be safer. Also I would suggest to update via Magento Customer Model instead of SQL.

You can find the sandbox script as below:

<?php

/**
 * @author      MagePsycho <info@magepsycho.com>
 * @website     http://www.magepsycho.com
 * @category    Export / Import
 */
require_once(dirname(__FILE__) . '/app/Mage.php');
Mage::setIsDeveloperMode(true);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
umask(0);
Mage::app('admin');
Mage::register('isSecureArea', 1);
Mage::app()->setCurrentStore(Mage_Core_Model_App::ADMIN_STORE_ID);

// Prepare you customer update data
$customersData = array(
    1234 => array( // where 1234 is customerId
        'website_id' => 2,
        'store_id' => 6
    ),
    //...
);

$counter = 1;
foreach ($customersData as $customerId => $_customer) {
    if ($customer = Mage::getModel('customer/customer')->load($customerId)) {

        $websiteId = $_customer['website_id'];
        $storeId   = $_customer['store_id'];
        $customer->setWebsiteId($websiteId);
        $customer->setStoreId($storeId);
        $customer->save();
        echo sprintf("Customer (%d) with website(%d) and store(%d) successfully changed", $customerId, $websiteId, $storeId) . '<br />';

        $counter++;
    }
}

Magento – Add new column in existing database table

If above syntax is not working for you then you can try below syntax to

<?php
$installer = $this;


$installer->startSetup();

try {
        $tableName = $installer->getTable('newsletter_subscriber');
        $installer->run(" ALTER TABLE {$tableName} ADD `subscriber_email` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL  ; ");
        $installer->endSetup();


} catch (Exception $e) {
        // to do
}

and also check your core_resource table if entry is already there for your new version then revert and try again

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Magento 1.9 – Is It Safe to Change Website ID and Store ID Directly in customer_entity Table

Magento – Add new column in existing database table

Related Topic