Change profile custom field type (Sitefinity 6.3)

Question

I have an old installation of Sitefinity (version 6.3) On the profile, I have a custom field that is numeric. I now have the needs to change this to hold a string instead.

What I found was that there is no easy way to change datatype (https://www.progress.com/documentation/sitefinity-cms/edit-an-existing-custom-field), but is It possible by code/config?

I'm guessing that one option is to delete the field, and then recreate it is a possibility, but since I have much data it would be a lot of work to restore data in the field. Is this the only way?

Edit: I've deleted the column and recreated it as a string/varchar. I'm now facing a problem with some type of converter

type converter initialization failed. The converter with name 'DecimalConverter' does not convert from CLR type 'System. String' to SQL type 'DECIMAL'.
Parameter name: converterName
Actual value was OpenAccessRuntime.Data.DecimalConverter, Telerik.OpenAccess.Runtime, Version=2013.3.1211.3, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=7ce17eeaf1d59342.

This line in stack trace is of importance

[MetadataException: The metadata for field 'CustomerNo_sv' of class 'Telerik.Sitefinity.Security.Model.SitefinityProfile' cannot be initialized: Type converter initialization failed. The converter with name 'DecimalConverter' does not convert from CLR type 'System. String' to SQL type 'DECIMAL'.
Parameter name: converterName
Actual value was OpenAccessRuntime.Data.DecimalConverter, Telerik.OpenAccess.Runtime, Version=2013.3.1211.3, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=7ce17eeaf1d59342.]

Somehow the language specified values isn't converted as I can see. Now the whole site is down and I can't reach backend. So I guess I have to solve this out in DB?

Veselin Vasilev Veselin Vasilev · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-13T08:19:27

What I do in similar cases is this:

I create the new field and then populate the new column in the database with the values from the old column (field).

In your case, you'd be looking at the sf_sitefinity_profile table.

This way the data will be migrated to the new field.

After that you can delete the old field and start using the new one.

Change profile custom field type (Sitefinity 6.3)

1 Answers