Is it possible to ignore the column when generating migrations

Question

My project working on Symfony 4.4 and doctrine migrations bundle 3.2.1.

I used the columnDefinition to write a special column:

columnDefinition="VARCHAR(50) GENERATED ALWAYS AS (IF(ISNULL(`cabinet_id`), 'null', `cabinet_id`)) VIRTUAL"

It works perfect, but now, every time when I call doctrine:migrations:diff, migration is trying to change the column for the same:

ALTER TABLE MonitoringReportUpdate CHANGE virtual_null `virtual_null` VARCHAR(50) GENERATED ALWAYS AS (IF(ISNULL(`cabinet_id`), \'null\', `cabinet_id`)) VIRTUAL

And even if I run this alter, and call doctrine:migrations:diff again, I'll see the same query to execute:

ALTER TABLE MonitoringReportUpdate CHANGE virtual_null `virtual_null` VARCHAR(50) GENERATED ALWAYS AS (IF(ISNULL(`cabinet_id`), \'null\', `cabinet_id`)) VIRTUAL

Did I use columnDefinition wrong or maybe it's just a bug? Or is it possible to ignore this column when I call generate migration?

Answer 1

This is something Doctrine is not able to analyze properly so he is not able to consider it "already done", so he is considering it missing each time you generate a diff. I already had to try such "complex" doctrine column def and i did not found a good workaround.

My best answer would be : There is something bad in your code that generate that kind of needed behavior in your database : avoid it and adapt your code.