Do you guys drop database columns? Its extra annoying to do the temp table nonsense

# android-architecture

[ursus]

Do you guys drop database columns? Its extra annoying to do the temp table nonsense

[bezrukov]

Room's auto-migrations will help a LOT with this
https://medium.com/androiddevelopers/room-auto-migrations-d5370b0ca6eb

[ursus]

yea I use sqldelight, shame

[marlonlom]

@ursus
¿why do you use temporal tables?
¿why the need to drop columns in a room database model?
🤔

[ursus]

well because my requirments changed and I dont need the column anymore, and wondering if I should drop or ignore it, however drop column only works from certain api level, so you need the temp table thing

[marlonlom]

@ursus you could use the @ignore annotation in the column you desire to uncheck.
@Ignore is a Room-specific annotation, saying that Room should ignore that field or method.

[ursus]

yea I dont use room, but sqldelight

[marlonlom]

@ursus mmm right.
with sqldelight, i think you've applied to write a delete statement or similar... but, sqlite has a limited feature about that:

SQLite supports a limited subset of ALTER TABLE. The ALTER TABLE command in SQLite allows the user to rename a table or to add a new column to an existing table. It is not possible to rename a column, remove a column, or add or remove constraints from a table.

I read the links below, and, i think it has to be a hard way to accomplish that, besides, the sqlite documentation is outdated and for recent versions, they have a valid usage of the drop column statement.

link:
1. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8442147/how-to-delete-or-add-column-in-sqlite
2. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5938048/delete-column-from-sqlite-table/5987838#5987838