Adding a column to an existing table in a Rails migration

Question

I have a Users model which needs an :email column (I forgot to add that column during the initial scaffold).

I opened the migration file and added t.string :email, did rake db:migrate, and got a NoMethodError. Then I added the line

add_column :users, :email, :string

again rake db:migrate, again NoMethodError. Am I missing a step here?

Edit: here's the migration file.

class CreateUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration  
  def self.up  
    add_column :users, :email, :string  
    create_table :users do |t|  
      t.string :username  
      t.string :email  
      t.string :crypted_password  
      t.string :password_salt  
      t.string :persistence_token  

      t.timestamps  
    end  
  end  

  def self.down  
    drop_table :users  
  end  
end

Answer 1

If you have already run your original migration (before editing it), then you need to generate a new migration (rails generate migration add_email_to_users email:string will do the trick). It will create a migration file containing line: add_column :users, email, string Then do a rake db:migrate and it'll run the new migration, creating the new column.

If you have not yet run the original migration you can just edit it, like you're trying to do. Your migration code is almost perfect: you just need to remove the add_column line completely (that code is trying to add a column to a table, before the table has been created, and your table creation code has already been updated to include a t.string :email anyway).