Why getting this error "django.db.utils.OperationalError: (1050, "Table 'someTable' already exists")"

Question

I am getting error like django.db.utils.OperationalError: (1050, "Table 'someTable' already exists") I want to know reason for getting this type error. I ran the following commands on termial

1. python manage.py makemigration app
2. python manage.py migrate app

When ran migrate then getting the above error. I solve my problem by running

python manage.py migrate --fake app

But I want to know why I am getting this error, and how --fake app solve my problem. Thanks

Answer 1

The table 'someTable' already exists in your database - either because it's been created by a previous call to ./manage.py syncdb or because you created it manually (or you used South before and are switching to Django >= 1.7) - and you obviously didn't have any existing django (non-south) migration, so makemigration thinks the table has to be created (rightly so sonce that will indeed be the case for someone that install your app from scratch).

Using the --fake flag tells migrate command to just record the migration has having been applied without effectively applying it, and that's the whole point of this flag: when your app has already been installed (db tables etc) without migrations and you want to start using migrations.

Answer 2

This problem means that someTable was created without Django migrations or record about migrations in django_migrations was deleted. --fake adds record about migrations in django_migrations without applying actual migrations.

Record in django_migrations contains information about migration: app label, migration name and date when migrations was applied.

Answer 3

I had the same problem. I was using the MySQL database.

With SQLite, you will need to delete the SQLite.db

All I did when using MySQL as database to handle this was...

1. make migrations python manage.py makemigrations
2. drop the database from the mysql shell mysql> drop database [database name];
3. create the database from the mysql shell mysql> create database [database name];
4. migrate using the python manage.py migrate --run-syncdb command