Rails: Relation does not exist for reference with class name in production

Question

I created two references in a migration that are aliases for a reference to my User table:

class CreateInvitations < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.0]
  def change
    create_table :invitations do |t|
      t.references :owner, references: :user, foreign_key: true # the owner
      t.references :invitee, references: :user, foreign_key: true # the invitee
      t.references :core_bot, foreign_key: true # the associated page (core_bot_active)
      t.string :email
      t.string :token

      t.timestamps

    end
  end
end

In my User model:

  has_many :invitations, foreign_key: :owner_id
  has_many :invitations, foreign_key: :invitee_id, dependent: :destroy

In my Invitation model:

  belongs_to :owner, class_name: :User
  belongs_to :invitee, class_name: :User

Everything works well in development but when I try to migrate in production with Heroku heroku run rake db:migrate, I get the following error:

PG::UndefinedTable: ERROR: relation "owners" does not exist : CREATE TABLE "invitations" ("id" serial primary key, "owner_id" integer, "invitee_id" integer, "core_bot_id" integer, "email" character varying, "token" character varying, "created_at" timestamp NOT NULL, "updated_at" timestamp NOT NULL, CONSTRAINT "fk_rails_59e24979a9" FOREIGN KEY ("owner_id") REFERENCES "owners" ("id") , CONSTRAINT "fk_rails_00204dc74b" FOREIGN KEY ("invitee_id") REFERENCES "invitees" ("id") , CONSTRAINT "fk_rails_34505bdb65" FOREIGN KEY ("core_bot_id") REFERENCES "core_bots" ("id") )

I tried without references: :user but I get the same error.

Any idea what's wrong here?

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 09 '17 at 11:44

Your development is probably an sqLite database but Heroku uses PostgreSQL and the interpretation of the migration is generating a foregn key to owners

Write the migration like this instead...

class CreateInvitations < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.0]
  def change
    create_table :invitations do |t|
      t.references :owner, index: true # the owner
      t.references :invitee, index: true # the invitee
      t.references :core_bot, foreign_key: true # the associated page (core_bot_active)
      t.string :email
      t.string :token

      t.timestamps

    end
    add_foreign_key :invitations, :users, column: :owner_id
    add_foreign_key :invitations, :users, column: :invitee_id
  end
end

It's one of the risks with developing using a different database product than the production implementation. Migrations may not work exactly the same. If planning to deploy to Heroku you should look at using postgreSQL in development.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 09 '17 at 11:34

I don't how to fix your problem. But I allways creating migrations for Postgres DB with foreign keys like this:

  def change
    create_table :invitations do |t|
      t.integer :owner_id
      t.integer :invitee_id
      t.references :core_bot, foreign_key: true # the associated page (core_bot_active)
      t.string :email
      t.string :token

      t.timestamps    
    end
    add_index :invitations, :owner_id 
    add_foreign_key :invitations, :users, column: :owner_id
    add_index :invitations, :invitee_id 
    add_foreign_key :invitations, :users, column: :invitee_id
  end

Thank you it works! I accept the answer of Steve as he gives a bit more details about the difference of database used. ;) — nico_lrx, Dec 09 '17 at 12:07

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 09 '17 at 11:40

-1

try removing foreign_key: true from the options, since we are giving it a references, I think we don't need a foreign_key: true option

class CreateInvitations < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.0]
  def change
    create_table :invitations do |t|
      t.references :owner, # the owner
      t.references :invitee, # the invitee
      t.references :core_bot # the associated page (core_bot_active)
      t.string :email
      t.string :token

      t.timestamps

    end
  end
end

answered Dec 09 '17 at 11:40

Dyaniyal Wilson

1,012
10
14

I don't think it would be the answer because you are not creating the FK on the `invitations` table. And that will cause that the validation is going to be only on the ORM layer but not at a DB level and data could be inconsistent. You should also add the corresponding FK and Indexes manually, something like this: ```add_foreign_key :invitations, :users, column: :owner_id``` ```add_foreign_key :invitations, :users, column: :invitee_id``` ```add_index :invitations, :owner_id``` ```add_index :invitations, :invitee_id``` – alexventuraio Mar 10 '19 at 17:57

Rails: Relation does not exist for reference with class name in production

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