With MongoDB, if I call to add a model to a database within the code, it just creates the table and/or database for you if it doesn't exist already. With MySQL it just gives me an error until I go and manually create the table myself with all the columns it wants - even when I tried getting express-session to work (to move forward I had to create a 'sessions' table within MySQL workbench with the sid, expires, data, createdAt, and updatedAt columns).

I'm wondering if there's a way to just create it automatically if it doesn't exist or if I'm just approaching the whole thing incorrectly (i.e. I need to create it once forever and I'm good to go, even after I deploy the website.) I made a 'database.sql' page in VS Code already, but I'm not sure how and where to link it to my main code.

CodePudding user response：

Its better to manually enter a table in MySql and not in code, just maintain database.sql file which you can maintain in your repo

CodePudding user response：

MySQL's CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS has existed for quite a while.

Use this either in a SQL file, and/or somewhere in the initialization part of your code.

If you've manually created the right structure in Workbench, grab the output from show create table sessions and you'll have a reproducible structure.

The advantage of SQL is its structured nature, so it shouldn't be too much a a surprise that tables aren't autocreated. With a correct structure and indexes it will perform well and contain structured data so you don't need to implement strict checks in your application code.