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

I had a similar situation where I didn't realize my hosting provider had such an old MySQL version that it still defaulted to MyISAM, but I'd already set up the basic Django tables.

This was posted about 2 months after the original question: Convert Legacy Django MySQL DBS from MyISAM to InnoDB.

That and leech/Trey's answer describe the ALTER TABLE ___ ENGINE=INNODB command that converts the table in MySQL, but the problem is that even though the tables are converted, they don't have the foreign key constraints that would have been set up if the tables had been INNODB in the first place.

I found, on django-admin.py and manage.py, that python manage.py sqlall appname "prints the CREATE TABLE and initial-data SQL statements for the given app name(s)."

I looked at INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py and ended up running something like python manage.py sqlall admin auth contenttypes sessions sites messages staticfiles (one for each django.contrib.appname in INSTALLED_APPS). That showed the initial CREATE TABLE statements, indexes and foreign key constraints:

ALTER TABLE `django_admin_log` ADD CONSTRAINT `content_type_id_refs_id_288599e6` FOREIGN KEY (`content_type_id`) REFERENCES `django_content_type` (`id`);
ALTER TABLE `django_admin_log` ADD CONSTRAINT `user_id_refs_id_c8665aa` FOREIGN KEY (`user_id`) REFERENCES `auth_user` (`id`);
ALTER TABLE `auth_permission` ADD CONSTRAINT `content_type_id_refs_id_728de91f` FOREIGN KEY (`content_type_id`) REFERENCES `django_content_type` (`id`);
ALTER TABLE `auth_group_permissions` ADD CONSTRAINT `permission_id_refs_id_a7792de1` FOREIGN KEY (`permission_id`) REFERENCES `auth_permission` (`id`);
ALTER TABLE `auth_group_permissions` ADD CONSTRAINT `group_id_refs_id_3cea63fe` FOREIGN KEY (`group_id`) REFERENCES `auth_group` (`id`);
ALTER TABLE `auth_user_user_permissions` ADD CONSTRAINT `permission_id_refs_id_67e79cb` FOREIGN KEY (`permission_id`) REFERENCES `auth_permission` (`id`);
ALTER TABLE `auth_user_groups` ADD CONSTRAINT `group_id_refs_id_f0ee9890` FOREIGN KEY (`group_id`) REFERENCES `auth_group` (`id`);
ALTER TABLE `auth_user_user_permissions` ADD CONSTRAINT `user_id_refs_id_f2045483` FOREIGN KEY (`user_id`) REFERENCES `auth_user` (`id`);
ALTER TABLE `auth_user_groups` ADD CONSTRAINT `user_id_refs_id_831107f1` FOREIGN KEY (`user_id`) REFERENCES `auth_user` (`id`);
ALTER TABLE `auth_message` ADD CONSTRAINT `user_id_refs_id_9af0b65a` FOREIGN KEY (`user_id`) REFERENCES `auth_user` (`id`);

After converting all the tables to ENGINE=INNODB I ran the foreign key constraints above and believe I should have the database in the same state as it would have been if my database had defaulted to creating INNODB tables in the first place.

Incidentally, as Michael van de Waeter mentioned in his answer, if you want any new tables Django creates to be INNODB by default, you should add 'OPTIONS': {"init_command": "SET storage_engine=INNODB",} to the DATABASES dict in settings.py