Converting an existing MyISAM database to InnoDB with Django

Question

Is there anyway I can convert a full populated MyISAM database to InnoDB (in a way that will create all foreign key contraints, same way it would be if I ran the syncdb command

Answer 1

Converting MyISAM to InnoDB with Django.

Given the old database is in MyISAM.

Dump the data of old database to json with:

$ python manage.py dumpdata contenttypes --indent=4 --natural > contenttype.json
$ python manage.py dumpdata --exclude contenttypes --indent=4 --natural > everything_else.json

Delete the old database, and create it again.

Add InnoDB settings in your settings.py like this:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
        'STORAGE_ENGINE': 'InnoDB',
        'NAME': 'yourdbname',
        'USER': '',
        'PASSWORD': '',
        'HOST': '',
        'PORT': '',
        'OPTIONS': {
            'init_command': 'SET storage_engine=InnoDB',  # better to set this in your database config, otherwise django has to do a query everytime
        }
    }
}

Create tables (django also adds the relations) Make sure you don't add an admin user:

$ python manage.py syncdb --migrate

Now you want to empty all the old tables:

$ python manage.py sqlflush | ./manage.py dbshell

Now you can load the new data into the database like so:

$ python manage.py loaddata contenttype.json
$ python manage.py loaddata everything_else.json

There you go. I used Django==1.4 for this.