Attempting to add a foreign key to a table fails? - mysql

Question

I have two tables -
CREATE TABLE `FOO` (
`user_id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
/*Nothing to see here*/
PRIMARY KEY (`user_id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=380 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
CREATE TABLE `BAR` (
`ID` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL,
`UserID` int(11) unsigned DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`ID`),
KEY `VSK_UserID_Index` (`UserID`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
I am attempting create a foreign key constraint on BAR.UserID referencing users.user_id -
ALTER TABLE `FOO`.`BAR`
ADD CONSTRAINT `BAR_UserID_FKey`
FOREIGN KEY (`UserID`)
REFERENCES `FOO`.`users` (`user_id`)
ON DELETE CASCADE
ON UPDATE CASCADE;
I keep getting this error -
Operation failed: There was an error while applying the SQL script to the database.
Error 1452: Cannot add or update a child row: a foreign key constraint fails
Both of these tables have data in them - could this be the reason why this is happening, or is there something wrong with how the tables are being created?
Is there something I need to alter on one of these tables to make this work?

Answer 1

The data already in one of the tables (in particular, `FOO`.`BAR`, since that is the one you're adding a constraint to) is not consistent with the data in `FOO`.`users` (`user_id`).
You must ensure that the values un the `FOO`.`BAR`.`UserID` column all exist in `FOO`.`users` (`user_id`). There may be null values or other values that do not exist in the other column.