Moving a Rails managed database to Phoenix

I am moving my app from Rails to Phoenix and as part of this I have to move my database from being managed by Rails migrations to Phoenix migrations. Here is how I did it:

  1. Rename the schema_migrations table. Phoenix uses Ecto for managing the database. Ecto and Rails use a table called schema_migrations to store the database migration info. So, you’ll have to rename it to avoid errors when you run Ecto migrations.
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    psql db
    ALTER TABLE schema_migrations RENAME TO rails_schema_migrations
  2. After this, you’ll need to create the schema_migrations table for ecto, you can do it by running the mix ecto.create command. This will set up the schema_migrations table in the existing database.

Now, you’ve successfully migrated your database. And, you can run your Phoenix/Ecto migrations like you would in a normal phoenix app.

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