On Migration: undefined method `to_sym' for nil:NilClass

Question

I\'m running Rails 3.0.3 and I accidentally made a typo in my migration: I created a migration that creates a new column with a type of boolen (it should have b

Answer 1

I got a similar error when I was trying to create a join table in Rails 4 and Ruby 2. Although the migration code looked good to me, it was id => true line that caused the issue. Here is how my migration code looked like when I got the error.

class CreateJoinTable < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    create_table :table1_table2, :id => true do |t|
        t.references :table1
        t.references :table2
        t.timestamps
    end
  end
end

This is the error I got -

==  CreateJoinTable: migrating =======================================
-- create_table(:table1_table2, {:id=>true})
rake aborted!
An error has occurred, this and all later migrations canceled:

undefined method `to_sym' for true:TrueClass/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/schema_definitions.rb:215:in `column'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:370:in `column'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/schema_definitions.rb:68:in `primary_key'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:363:in `primary_key'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/schema_statements.rb:181:in `create_table'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:625:in `block in method_missing'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:597:in `block in say_with_time'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:597:in `say_with_time'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:617:in `method_missing'
/Users/aswin/Code/webbloks/db/migrate/20131101044153_create_property_join_tables.rb:3:in `change'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:571:in `exec_migration'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:555:in `block (2 levels) in migrate'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:554:in `block in migrate'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:294:in `with_connection'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:553:in `migrate'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:709:in `migrate'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:959:in `block in execute_migration_in_transaction'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:1005:in `block in ddl_transaction'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:202:in `block in transaction'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:210:in `within_new_transaction'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:202:in `transaction'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:209:in `transaction'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:1005:in `ddl_transaction'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:958:in `execute_migration_in_transaction'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:920:in `block in migrate'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:916:in `each'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:916:in `migrate'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:764:in `up'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/migration.rb:742:in `migrate'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/railties/databases.rake:42:in `block (2 levels) in '
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/bin/ruby_noexec_wrapper:14:in `eval'
/Users/aswin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p0/bin/ruby_noexec_wrapper:14:in `
'

I removed :id => true and the it migrated successfully.

I know this doesn't apply to your question exactly. But if someone is having this issue, pretty sure they'll find this thread.