Upgrading from `1.x` to `2.x`

The 2.0.0 release of SurrealDB includes many new features, improvements, and bug fixes. However, due to this there are some breaking changes that you should be aware of when upgrading.

This guide will help you upgrade your current SurrealDB installation to the latest 2.x release.

Breaking changes

Datastore

The underlying approach for storing record ids and ranges has changed
- Record IDs now support storing UUIDs instead of strings
- Ranges are now their own value as suppose to being available as just record id ranges

SurrealQL

The UPDATE statement no longer creates records if these are missing. Instead, use the new UPSERT statement for this behaviour.
The file:// connection protocol has been deprecated in favour of the more explicit rocksdb:// protocol.
The DEFINE SCOPE statement has been dropped in favor for the new DEFINE ACCESS TYPE RECORD statement
- DEFINE TOKEN definitions defined under scopes are now integrated into DEFINE ACCESS TYPE RECORD.
Some functions have been renamed for clarity
- meta::tb() -> record::tb()
- meta::id() -> record::id()
- string::endsWith() -> string::ends_with()
- string::startsWith() -> string::starts_with()

Authentication & Headers

Authentication is now enabled by default as you previously would with --auth. The --unauthenticated flag is now required in order to provide the previous default behavior.
Specifying the level on which credentials will be authenticated is now required when connecting to SurrealDB. By default, this level will be root. This can be provided with the --auth-level flag in the CLI or the surreal-auth-ns and surreal-auth-db headers in the HTTP REST API.
SurrealDB now listens only for connections from the local machine unless another interface (e.g. 0.0.0.0) is provided via the --bind command line argument.
SurrealDB now does not print secrets in response to INFO statements. The values of the secrets will appear as [REDACTED] to prevent accidental leakage. The export functionality will still print the values of the secrets. An UNREDACTED clause will be added soon to provide the previous behavior.
Headers used to communicated via HTTP with SurrealDB now require the surreal- prefix. For example, the legacy ns and db headers are now surreal-ns and surreal-db.

Upgrading your data

A new surreal fix command has been implemented to automatically change the format of your stored data. The command is followed by a path to the data. For example:

# For SurrealKV
surreal fix surrealkv://mydata

# For RocksDB
surreal fix rocksdb:somedatabase

Limitations of the surreal fix command

Although the surreal fix command is a quick way to migrate your data, it is not without its drawbacks:

If you have used the now deprecated DEFINE TOKEN command to define a token on a Scope with the also deprecated DEFINE SCOPE command, you will have to update your access management rules to use the new DEFINE ACCESS which supports creating permissions using TYPE JWT and TYPE RECORD rules.
If you were querying SurrealDB via the HTTP API, the surreal fix command will not update the header format for you. You will need to manually update the header format from ns and db to surreal-ns and surreal-db respectively before using the surreal fix command. Learn more about this in the HTTP documentation.

Upgrading from 2.0.0-alpha

The surreal fix command above has been created specifically for 1.x instances. However, data currently on a 2.0.0-alpha instance can still be manually exported and then reimported into a project running on 2.0.0 via the following steps.

Export your current data as a .surql (SurrealQL) file. You can do this using the surreal export command in the terminal:

# Example export command to export data to a file called `export.surql` in the downloads directory.
surreal export --conn http://localhost:8000 --user root --pass secret --ns test --db test downloads/export.surql

This will create a file called export.surql in the current directory.
You can now import this file back into your project running on 2.0.0.

surreal import --conn http://localhost:8000 --user root --pass secret --ns test --db test downloads/export.surql

Troubleshooting

Error when connecting to a `2.x` instance.

If you are trying to connect to a 2.x instance, and get an error similar to the following, you are likely using an older version of SurrealDB.

error: Storage version is out-of-date.

Read the full changelog

There have been major improvements to SurrealDB in 2.0.0 release both in alpha and beta. Check out the changes on the release page.

Upgrading from 1.x to 2.x