Newly added field to table is completely ignored - mysql

Question

I am completely new to Drupal. I inherited a very ugly and incorrect code, unfortunately. In fact I would like to implement a proper login-with-facebook feature, which was totally mis-implemented. It tried to identify users by their email address, however, for some reason, upon login with Facebook, users logged in with the wrong user. I would like to identify the user based on Facebook ID, however, there was no column for that purpose in the database.
As a result, I have implemented a small script, which added a facebook_id and a facebook_token to the table representing the users. However, these new columns are not seen by the drupal_get_schema function in bootstrap.
If I do this:
$schema = drupal_get_schema("users");
echo var_dump($schema["fields"]);
It shows the fields except the two newly created fields. This way a SchemaCache object is initialized. I assumed that the schema might be cached. So I tried something different:
$schema = drupal_get_schema("users", true);
echo var_dump($schema["fields"]);
to make sure that drupal_get_complete_schema(true) will be called. However, the fields are not seen this way either. Is there a way I can tell Drupal to acknowledge the existence of the two newly created columns? If not: what should I do? Should I remove the two columns from the database table and use db_add_field("users", "facebook_id") and db_add_field("users", "facebook_token") respectively? If so, where should I call these?
Sorry if the question is too simple or I am misunderstanding these technologies, but I have tried to solve this for hours and I am at a loss, because this is my first drupal/bootstrap project and the source-code using these does not help me at all.
EDIT:
Since, at the time of this writing I have not received any answers apart from a tool recommendation which did not address my question, I have continued my research in the area. I removed the columns from the database to create them in a Drupal way. I have implemented this function in user.module:
function user_schema_alter() {
db_add_field('users', 'facebook_id', array(
'type' => 'varchar', //was initially a bigint, but Drupal generated a query which always crashed
'length' => 20,
'not null' => TRUE,
'default' => ".", //was initially -1, but Drupal generated a query which always crashed
));
db_add_field('users', 'facebook_token', array(
'type' => 'varchar',
'length' => 300,
'not null' => TRUE,
'default' => 'unavailable',
));
}
and I invoke it from altconnect.module, like this:
$schema = drupal_get_schema("users");
if (!isset($schema["fields"]["facebook_id"])) {
user_schema_alter();
}
It creates the columns, but later the existence of those columns will not be known about and subsequently an error will be thrown as the code will try to re-create them. Besides the fact that I had lost a lot of time until I realized that Drupal is unable to support bigint fields having -1 as their default value I had to conclude that with this solution I am exactly in the same situation as I were initially, with the difference that with this Drupal solution I will always get an exception if the columns already exist, because the schema will not be aware of them and subsequently, the code will always enter that if.
I fail to understand why is this so difficult in Drupal and I totally fail to understand why trying
db_add_field('users', 'facebook_id', array(
'type' => 'bigint',
'length' => 20,
'not null' => TRUE,
'default' => -1,
));
throws an exception due to syntax error. Maybe I should just leave this project and tell anyone who considers using Drupal to reconsider :)

Answer 1

I was able to find out what the answer is, at least for Drupal 6.
In user.install we need to do the following:
//...
function user_schema() {
//...
$schema['users'] = array(
//...
'fields' => array(
//...
'facebook_id' => array(
'type' => 'varchar',
'length' => 20,
'not null' => TRUE,
'default' => ".",
),
'facebook_token' => array(
'type' => 'varchar',
'length' => 300,
'not null' => TRUE,
'default' => 'unavailable',
),
//...
),
//...
}
//...
/**
* Adds two fields (the number is some kind of version number, should be the biggest so far for the module)
*/
function user_update_7919() {
db_add_field('users', 'facebook_id', array(
'type' => 'varchar',
'length' => 20,
'not null' => TRUE,
'default' => ".",
));
db_add_field('users', 'facebook_token', array(
'type' => 'varchar',
'length' => 300,
'not null' => TRUE,
'default' => 'unavailable',
));
}
When this is done, log in with the admin user and go to http://example.com/update.php
There you will see the thing to be updated. Run it. If you wonder why do we have to do all this, why don't we run some scripts directly, then the answer is that this is how Drupal operates. It simplifies your life by making it complicated, but do not worry, while you wait for update.php to do the updates which would take less than a second if it was your script, you can ponder about the meaning of life, quantum-mechanics or you can try to find out the reason this is so over-complicated in Drupal and you can go out for a walk. When you focus again, if you are lucky, update.php has completed its job and the two columns should be in the database.