typeORM No changes in database schema were found - cannot generate a migration. To create a new empty migration use "typeorm migration:create" command

Question

I'm doing a course where we are using express-node postgres and react (with typescript) and typeORM. Everything has worked well so far, but I'm facing an issue with typeORM and I don't know what is going and why is this error happening

The Big Problem : So, the problem is that, I was doing the auth, and at some point we changed users schema in the DB so we had to make a migration, but, before migration, we did npm run typeorm schema:drop ,but when I tried, this happened with migration

This is the first command I used

npm run typeorm migration:generate -- --n create-users-table

This was the error

> new-typeorm-project@0.0.1 typeorm C:\Users\diego cifuentes\Desktop\Studying  Backend\redit> ts-node ./node_modules/typeorm/cli.js "migration:generate" "create-users-table"

bin.js migration:generate

Generates a new migration file with sql needs to be executed to update
schema.

Opciones:
  -h, --help          Muestra ayuda                             [booleano]  -c, --connection    Name of the connection on which run a query.
                                                      [defecto: "default"]  -n, --name          Name of the migration class.
                                        [cadena de caracteres] [requerido]  -d, --dir           Directory where migration should be created.
  -p, --pretty        Pretty-print generated SQL
                                               [booleano] [defecto: false]  -f, --config        Name of the file with connection configuration.
                                                    [defecto: "ormconfig"]  -o, --outputJs      Generate a migration file on Javascript instead of
                      Typescript               [booleano] [defecto: false]      --dr, --dryrun  Prints out the contents of the migration instead of
                      writing it to a file     [booleano] [defecto: false]      --ch, --check   Verifies that the current database is up to date and                      that no migrations are needed. Otherwise exits with
                      code 1.                  [booleano] [defecto: false]  -v, --version       Muestra número de versión                 [booleano]
Falta argumento requerido: n
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! errno 1
npm ERR! new-typeorm-project@0.0.1 typeorm: `ts-node ./node_modules/typeorm/cli.js "migration:generate" "create-users-table"`
npm ERR! Exit status 1
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Failed at the new-typeorm-project@0.0.1 typeorm script.
npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     C:\Users\diego cifuentes\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache\_logs\2021-05-11T15_29_02_081Z-debug.log

After hours trying to search for solution everywhere, I change the last command to this one

npx typeorm migration:generate -- --n create-users-table

And the error was different this time, looks like this

No changes in database schema were found - cannot generate a migration. To create a new empty migration use "typeorm migration:create" command

So, I said, ok, I'm getting closer to fixing this, but... After hours ( again ) looking for a new answer, I couldn't find anything, so, I'm getting to a point where I need to write this post in order to fix my problem. So now, let me show you my ormconfig, my package.json and the entity I want to migrate in my postgres DB.

package.json (the script typeorm is at the end)

{
  "name": "new-typeorm-project",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "description": "Awesome project developed with TypeORM.",
  "devDependencies": {
    "@types/bcrypt": "^5.0.0",
    "@types/cookie": "^0.4.0",
    "@types/cookie-parser": "^1.4.2",
    "@types/express": "^4.17.11",
    "@types/jsonwebtoken": "^8.5.1",
    "@types/morgan": "^1.9.2",
    "@types/node": "^15.0.2",
    "morgan": "^1.10.0",
    "nodemon": "^2.0.7",
    "ts-node": "^9.1.1",
    "typescript": "^4.2.4"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "bcrypt": "^5.0.1",
    "class-transformer": "^0.4.0",
    "class-validator": "^0.13.1",
    "cookie": "^0.4.1",
    "cookie-parser": "^1.4.5",
    "dotenv": "^9.0.1",
    "express": "^4.17.1",
    "jsonwebtoken": "^8.5.1",
    "pg": "^8.4.0",
    "reflect-metadata": "^0.1.10",
    "typeorm": "0.2.32"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "start": "ts-node src/server.ts",
    "dev": "nodemon --exec ts-node src/server.ts",
    "typeorm": "ts-node ./node_modules/typeorm/cli.js"
  }
}

ormconfing.json Quick note : I changed entities, migrations and subscribers to.js, because with.ts was always giving me error.

{
  "type": "postgres",
  "host": "localhost",
  "port": 5432,
  "username": "**",
  "password": "**",
  "database": "**",
  "synchronize": true,
  "logging": true,
  "entities": ["src/entities/**/*.js"],
  "migrations": ["src/migrations/**/*.js"],
  "subscribers": ["src/subscribers/**/*.js"],
  "cli": {
    "entitiesDir": "src/entities",
    "migrationsDir": "src/migrations",
    "subscribersDir": "src/subscribers"
  }
}

And last thing I want to show you, even though it might not be that important, this is the users schema

import {
  Entity as TOEntity,
  Column,
  Index,
  BeforeInsert,
  OneToMany
} from "typeorm";
import bcrypt from "bcrypt";
import { IsEmail, Length } from "class-validator";
import { Exclude } from "class-transformer";

import Entity from "./Entity";
// import Post from "./Post";

@TOEntity("users")
export default class User extends Entity {
  constructor(user: Partial<User>) {
    super();
    Object.assign(this, user);
  }

  @Index()
  @IsEmail()
  @Column({ unique: true })
  email: string;

  @Index()
  @Length(3, 200)
  @Column({ unique: true })
  username: string;

  @Exclude()
  @Length(6, 200)
  @Column()
  password: string;

  // @OneToMany(() => Post, post => post.user)
  // posts: Post[];

  @BeforeInsert()
  async hashedPassword() {
    this.password = await bcrypt.hash(this.password, 6);
  }
}

End Goal : So, if you can help me with this, you will save my life. One last thing is that I tried to post my problems first in the Spanish website of stack overflow, but nobody could help me, so maybe here someone will, thanks for your time and take care!

Answer 1

Change your entities , migrations and subscribers into your dist directory.

eg:

  entities: ["dist/entities/**/*{.js,.ts}"],
  migrations: ["dist/migrations/**/*{.js,.ts}"],
  subscribers: ["dist/subscribers/**/*{.js,.ts}"],

dist directory is the directory which gets created when you build the app. You can find your dist directory using tsconfig.json -> compilerOptions -> outDir .

Then build your app again using npm run build and try to generate the migrations.

Answer 2

I've seen this error, and if I'm not mistaken it's because I was trying to create a bank that had already been created.

This command below deletes all tables:

yarn typeorm query "DROP SCHEMA public CASCADE; CREATE SCHEMA public; GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA public to PUBLIC; GRANT CREATE ON SCHEMA public to PUBLIC; COMMENT ON SCHEMA public IS 'standard public schema';"

then:

yarn typeorm --migration:generate -n migration_name -d path/to/your/migrations/

Answer 3

For me the ormconfig.json's was like this,

   "entities": [
      "dist/entity/**/*.ts"
   ],
   "migrations": [
      "src/migration/**/*.ts"
   ],
   "subscribers": [
      "src/subscriber/**/*.ts"
   ],

Changing it to

   "entities": [
      "src/entity/**/*{.js,.ts}"
   ],
   "migrations": [
      "src/migration/**/*{.js,.ts}"
   ],
   "subscribers": [
      "src/subscriber/**/*{.js,.ts}"
   ],

generated the migration correctly.

And the package.json script is like this "typeorm": "node --require ts-node/register./node_modules/typeorm/cli.js"

And the command used is

npm run typeorm migration:generate -- -n FileAddTemporaryDeletedFields -p --dr --ch

Answer 4

ormconfig.json is deprecated in latest version as i know. but anyway I'm gonna share my solution when i used old version.

when generate, typeorm first reads ormconfig.json and login into rdbms. and compares between 'the actual schema of db' and 'schema file as ormconfig.json[entities]'

so, if the file (writen at 'entities' in ormconfig.json) is in dist folder. you have to edit that.js file.(not.ts file in src folder)

but, if the 'entities' file is in src folder as ormconfig.json, check if 'autosave' feature of vscode is on. if you 'npm run start:dev' It could be the case that the actual schema of db has been already modified before you edit entities file.