GreenDAO schema update and data migration?

Question

I'm evaluating GreenDAO for consideration in a commercial Android app I will be working on and wanted to determine the migration path for schema updates.

Am I correct in asserting that I would have to write a custom OpenHelper which provides the onUpdate() and extracts transforms and stores data according to the new schema? This assumption raises some interesting questions around ordering of calls and partitioning of responsibility.

I have not been able to find any documentation around schema update and data migration for GreenDAO.

Here are a bunch of blog articles I have written on this topic:

1. Review of greenDAO
2. Part 1 – Schema Generation
3. Part 2 – Schema Migration
4. Part 3 – Testing Schema Migration

Answer 1

Thinking about the pleonasmik's approach (by the way, thanks, it was really helpfull), I created one MigrationHelper class.

How it works:

1. The class catch all the Daos that you got
2. Creates the temporary tables based on the old version's scheme (generateTempTables method)
3. Import all the data to this new tables (generateTempTables method)
4. Drop all the tables of the old version (DaoMaster.dropAllTables method)
5. Creates the tables of the new version (DaoMaster.createAllTables method)
6. Updates the new version's tables from the temporaries (restoreData method)
7. Drop all temporary tables (restoreData method)

Migration Helper class:

import android.database.Cursor;
import android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase;
import android.text.TextUtils;
import android.util.Log;

import com.crashlytics.android.Crashlytics;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;

import de.greenrobot.dao.AbstractDao;
import de.greenrobot.dao.internal.DaoConfig;
import greendao.DaoMaster;


/**
 * Created by pokawa on 18/05/15.
 */
public class MigrationHelper {

    private static final String CONVERSION_CLASS_NOT_FOUND_EXCEPTION = "MIGRATION HELPER - CLASS DOESN'T MATCH WITH THE CURRENT PARAMETERS";
    private static MigrationHelper instance;

    public static MigrationHelper getInstance() {
        if(instance == null) {
            instance = new MigrationHelper();
        }
        return instance;
    }

    public void migrate(SQLiteDatabase db, Class<? extends AbstractDao<?, ?>>... daoClasses) {
        generateTempTables(db, daoClasses);
        DaoMaster.dropAllTables(db, true);
        DaoMaster.createAllTables(db, false);
        restoreData(db, daoClasses);
    }

    private void generateTempTables(SQLiteDatabase db, Class<? extends AbstractDao<?, ?>>... daoClasses) {
        for(int i = 0; i < daoClasses.length; i++) {
            DaoConfig daoConfig = new DaoConfig(db, daoClasses[i]);

            String divider = "";
            String tableName = daoConfig.tablename;
            String tempTableName = daoConfig.tablename.concat("_TEMP");
            ArrayList<String> properties = new ArrayList<>();

            StringBuilder createTableStringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

            createTableStringBuilder.append("CREATE TABLE ").append(tempTableName).append(" (");

            for(int j = 0; j < daoConfig.properties.length; j++) {
                String columnName = daoConfig.properties[j].columnName;

                if(getColumns(db, tableName).contains(columnName)) {
                    properties.add(columnName);

                    String type = null;

                    try {
                        type = getTypeByClass(daoConfig.properties[j].type);
                    } catch (Exception exception) {
                        Crashlytics.logException(exception);
                    }

                    createTableStringBuilder.append(divider).append(columnName).append(" ").append(type);

                    if(daoConfig.properties[j].primaryKey) {
                        createTableStringBuilder.append(" PRIMARY KEY");
                    }

                    divider = ",";
                }
            }
            createTableStringBuilder.append(");");

            db.execSQL(createTableStringBuilder.toString());

            StringBuilder insertTableStringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

            insertTableStringBuilder.append("INSERT INTO ").append(tempTableName).append(" (");
            insertTableStringBuilder.append(TextUtils.join(",", properties));
            insertTableStringBuilder.append(") SELECT ");
            insertTableStringBuilder.append(TextUtils.join(",", properties));
            insertTableStringBuilder.append(" FROM ").append(tableName).append(";");

            db.execSQL(insertTableStringBuilder.toString());
        }
    }

    private void restoreData(SQLiteDatabase db, Class<? extends AbstractDao<?, ?>>... daoClasses) {
        for(int i = 0; i < daoClasses.length; i++) {
            DaoConfig daoConfig = new DaoConfig(db, daoClasses[i]);

            String tableName = daoConfig.tablename;
            String tempTableName = daoConfig.tablename.concat("_TEMP");
            ArrayList<String> properties = new ArrayList();

            for (int j = 0; j < daoConfig.properties.length; j++) {
                String columnName = daoConfig.properties[j].columnName;

                if(getColumns(db, tempTableName).contains(columnName)) {
                    properties.add(columnName);
                }
            }

            StringBuilder insertTableStringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

            insertTableStringBuilder.append("INSERT INTO ").append(tableName).append(" (");
            insertTableStringBuilder.append(TextUtils.join(",", properties));
            insertTableStringBuilder.append(") SELECT ");
            insertTableStringBuilder.append(TextUtils.join(",", properties));
            insertTableStringBuilder.append(" FROM ").append(tempTableName).append(";");

            StringBuilder dropTableStringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

            dropTableStringBuilder.append("DROP TABLE ").append(tempTableName);

            db.execSQL(insertTableStringBuilder.toString());
            db.execSQL(dropTableStringBuilder.toString());
        }
    }

    private String getTypeByClass(Class<?> type) throws Exception {
        if(type.equals(String.class)) {
            return "TEXT";
        }
        if(type.equals(Long.class) || type.equals(Integer.class) || type.equals(long.class)) {
            return "INTEGER";
        }
        if(type.equals(Boolean.class)) {
            return "BOOLEAN";
        }

        Exception exception = new Exception(CONVERSION_CLASS_NOT_FOUND_EXCEPTION.concat(" - Class: ").concat(type.toString()));
        Crashlytics.logException(exception);
        throw exception;
    }

    private static List<String> getColumns(SQLiteDatabase db, String tableName) {
        List<String> columns = new ArrayList<>();
        Cursor cursor = null;
        try {
            cursor = db.rawQuery("SELECT * FROM " + tableName + " limit 1", null);
            if (cursor != null) {
                columns = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList(cursor.getColumnNames()));
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            Log.v(tableName, e.getMessage(), e);
            e.printStackTrace();
        } finally {
            if (cursor != null)
                cursor.close();
        }
        return columns;
    }
}

And here's an example that how it should be called at the DaoMaster.java class:

@Override
    public void onUpgrade(SQLiteDatabase db, int oldVersion, int newVersion) {
        Log.i("greenDAO", "Upgrading schema from version " + oldVersion + " to " + newVersion + " by migrating all tables data");

        MigrationHelper.getInstance().migrate(db,
                UserDao.class,
                ItemDao.class);
    }