Database Migrations

How to manage schema migrations for your Supabase project.

Database migrations are SQL statements that create, update, or delete your existing database schemas. They are a common way of tracking changes to your database over time.

Schema migrations

For this guide, we'll create a table called employees and see how we can make changes to it.

You will need to install the Supabase CLI and start the local development stack.

Create your first migration file

To get started, generate a new migration to store the SQL needed to create our employees table.

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supabase migration new create_employees_table

Add the SQL to your migration file

This creates a new migration file in supabase/migrations directory.

To that file, add the SQL to create this employees table.

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create table if not exists employees (  id bigint primary key generated always as identity,  name text not null,  email text,  created_at timestamptz default now());

Apply your first migration

Run this migration to create the employees table.

Now you can visit your new employees table in the local Dashboard.

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supabase migration up

Modify your employees table

Next, modify your employees table by adding a column for department.

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supabase migration new add_department_column

Add a new column to your table

To that new migration file, add the SQL to create a new department column.

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alter table if exists public.employeesadd department text default 'Hooli';

Apply your second migration

Run this migration to update your existing employees table.

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supabase migration up

Finally, you should see the department column added to your employees table in the local Dashboard.

View the complete code for this example on GitHub.

Seeding data

Now that you are managing your database with migrations scripts, it would be great have some seed data to use every time you reset the database.

Populate your table

Create a seed script in supabase/seed.sql.

To that file, add the SQL to insert data into your employees table.

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insert into public.employees  (name)values  ('Erlich Bachman'),  ('Richard Hendricks'),  ('Monica Hall');

Reset your database

Reset your database to reapply migrations and populate with seed data.

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supabase db reset

You should now see the employees table, along with your seed data in the Dashboard! All of your database changes are captured in code, and you can reset to a known state at any time, complete with seed data.

Diffing changes

This workflow is great if you know SQL and are comfortable creating tables and columns. If not, you can still use the Dashboard to create tables and columns, and then use the CLI to diff your changes and create migrations.

Create your table from the Dashboard

Create a new table called cities, with columns id, name and population.

Then generate a schema diff.

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supabase db diff -f create_cities_table

Add schema diff as a migration

A new migration file is created for you.

Alternately, you can copy the table definitions directly from the Table Editor.

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create table "public"."cities" (  "id" bigint primary key generated always as identity,  "name" text,  "population" bigint);

Test your migration

Test your new migration file by resetting your local database.

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supabase db reset

The last step is deploying these changes to a live Supabase project.

Deploy your project

You've been developing your project locally, making changes to your tables via migrations. It's time to deploy your project to the Supabase Platform and start scaling up to millions of users!

Head over to Supabase and create a new project to deploy to.

Log in to the Supabase CLI

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supabase login

Link your project

Link to your remote project by selecting from the on-screen prompt.

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supabase link

Deploy database changes

Push your migrations to the remote database.

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supabase db push

Visiting your live project on Supabase, you'll see a new employees table, complete with the department column you added in the second migration above.