Data Loss Issue when Adding/Changing a Field

[shut crater]

👋 Hey everyone! I'm facing an issue with PayloadCMS and could really use some help. Here's what happened: I added a new not-nullable field to one of my tables, but when I saved the changes, it ended up deleting a significant number of records and associated data. 😔

I'm really worried about this data loss and I want to find a solution to prevent it. I tried setting the field as optional, adding default values to the existing records, and then changing it to required, but that didn't work either. The records were still deleted. 😢

If anyone has experience with PayloadCMS or a similar situation, I'd greatly appreciate your guidance. How can I add this new field without losing any data? Is there a recommended approach or best practice for handling this kind of situation?
Please share any tips, suggestions, or recommended tools/scripts that can help me safely add the new field while preserving my existing data. Thank you so much for your support! 🙏

[torpid lintel]

New Community-Help Thread Created!

Help is on the way! To mark it as solved, use the /solve command. In the meantime, here are some existing threads that may help you:

Documentation:

• field-by-field-localization
• redirects-plugin
• hooks-overview

Community-Help:

• Please correct invalid fields error
• Upload media image orientation
• Cookie is not set in production but works in local
• 401 Unauthorized on many requests in prod build

[little rover]

I believe this is what migrations are for. For example, you can use migration to assign a value for the new field for existing documents. The data loss is probably due to push option in PostgreSQL adapter configuration (https://payloadcms.com/docs/database/postgres#options) which is enabled for development only by default. You can probably disable it for development also if you start using migrations. https://payloadcms.com/docs/database/migrations