Add Record without deleting data

Question

I'm working on a plugin, and would like to add a new Record, I already have some records, and would like to keep the data.

Is there a way to activate a new record type, without re-installing the plugin, thus loosing the other records data?

Answer 1

The Craft website has a great article on this, you can simply use migrations following this document:

https://craftcms.com/docs/plugins/migrations

If your schema changes over the life of your plugin, you can write a migration to keep existing installations updated with the latest schema. Craft automatically checks for new migrations whenever a plugin’s version number changes.

In summary, you can create the Record and define all the attributes, then create a migration that would create the new table with those attributes. This would be done in the safeUp() method that utilizes Craft create command:

craft()->db->createCommand()->createTable('new_table_record_name', $attributesArray, null, true);

When the plugin is updated, it will run the migrations and create the table.