How can I update a nullable database field to NULL using TypeORM?

Answering this seemingly simple question has proven to be quite challenging.

In my backend application using Express and Typescript, I am working on implementing a password reset feature. The database I am using is Postgres with Typeorm for data manipulation. Within my database, I have an entity called User that consists of two columns:

@Column({
    unique: true,
    nullable: true,
})
resetPasswordToken!: string;

@Column({ nullable: true, type: 'timestamp with time zone' })
resetPasswordExpiresAt!: Date;

When a user requests a password reset token, both the resetPasswordToken and resetPasswordExpiresAt fields are populated. Upon receiving the token via email, the user can proceed to reset their password. After the password has been successfully reset, I intend to clear these fields by setting them to null:

user.resetPasswordToken = null;
user.resetPasswordExpiresAt = null;
user.save()

However, attempting to assign the value of null triggers errors in Typescript:

Type 'null' is not assignable to type 'string'.

and

Type 'null' is not assignable to type 'Date'.

To resolve these errors, I modified the entity column definitions to allow for null values like so:

resetPasswordToken!: string | null;
...
resetPasswordExpiresAt!: Date | null;

But upon launching my Express application, I encountered a new issue when Typeorm attempted to connect to the database:

Data type "Object" in "User.resetPasswordToken" is not supported by "postgres" database.

 

How can I successfully set these fields to null without encountering errors?

typescriptpostgresqlexpresstypeorm

Answer №1

Following a peaceful night's sleep, I was able to successfully resolve the issue at hand.

In Typeorm, the data type of database fields is determined by the type assigned to variables in your typescript entities. For example, when I specified string as the type in typescript for my entity, Typeorm converted it into a varchar field in my postgres database.

@Column({
    unique: true,
    nullable: true,
})
resetPasswordToken!: string;

However, this approach led to an error in my project. While the code snippet above seemed correct, Typescript interpreted both data types as part of a single object, causing confusion for Typeorm.

resetPasswordToken!: string | null;

To address this issue, I had to explicitly define the database field type like so:

@Column({
    type: 'text',
    unique: true,
    nullable: true,
})
resetPasswordToken!: string;

Answer №2

The provided answer is somewhat inaccurate. The default typeorm conversion for a string type in a MySQL database is actually "varchar". Therefore, using type: "text" would result in the column being defined incorrectly. To ensure compatibility with the default behavior, it is recommended to use TypeScript types like so:

@Column({
    type: String,
    unique: true,
    nullable: true,
})
resetPasswordToken!: string | null;

Answer №3

@Field('text', {
    isUnique: true,
    canBeNull: true,
})
confirmationCode!: string;

Answer №4

In order to resolve the issue at hand, I needed to specifically define the data type for the database field as shown below:

{
   name: "tag_id",
   type: "varchar",
   isNullable: true
},

Answer №5

If you want to save a Date with a null value, simply use the nullable:true option in the @Column() decorator and save the object without assigning any value to the property.

@Column('text', {
    unique: true,
    nullable: true,
})
resetPasswordToken: string;

//user.resetPasswordToken = null

user.save()

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