Modify Tables with `change_table` in Rails

Ever since I used ecto in Elixir Phoenix, I've always thought about their alter table function while working on Rails projects. Turns out, I have been living under a rock and I could have been using change_table this whole time 🤦🏻‍♂️

For those new to the change_table function, it allows you to make bulk alterations to a single table with one block statement. You can adjust columns(and their types), references, indexes, indexes, etc. For a full list of transformations, see the official api documentation.

If you're using Postgres or MySQL, you can also add an optional argument bulk: true and it will tell the block to generate a bulk SQL alter statement.

class AddUserIdToPosts < ActiveRecord::Migration[7.1]
  def change
    change_table(:posts, bulk: true) do |t|
      t.remove_reference :user_post, :text, null: false
      t.references :user, null: false
    end
  end
end

API Ruby on Rails - change_table

Hooray Rails! 🥳