Web2py: how to do a fake migration to change database hostname

As mentioned in our recent newsletter and mailshot, we're finally switching off the old mysql.server address for our mysql service in favour of the new yourusername.mysql.pythonanywhere-services.com address, which has been the default for the last year or so.

If you're a web2py user and your DAL connection string still contains mysql.server, you'll need to change it.

It's actually the exact same database underneath, just a different address for it, but changing DAL details in web2py causes web2py to think you need to do a database migration, and that causes problems.

To get around these, we've been advised by other web2py users that you should go through the following procedure:

1. Enable fake_migrate_all by adding this argument to the DAL constructor containing the new database name:

   db = DAL(..., fake_migrate_all=True)

   Migrate for individual table definitions should be set to False

2. Load your site, at least once, eg by opening the admin site.

3. Disable fake_migrate_all by removing that argument again. This is important, because otherwise your web2py migrations will be disabled forever, and you won't be able to make changes to your models any more, and web2py will be confused...