extending-user-schema.md

Extending user schema

Adding columns to the user tables may be tempting. However, all the tables and columns have a specific purpose, and changing the structure of the auth schema will very likely end in breaking the functionning of Hasura Auth. It's, therefore, highly recommended not to modify the database schema for any tables in the auth schema.

Instead, we recommend adding extra user information in the following ways:

• to store information in the auth.users.metadata column
• to store information in a separate table located in the public PostgreSQL schema, and to point to auth.users.id through a foreign key.

metadata user field

The auth.users.metadata field is a JSON column, that can be used as an option on registration:

{
  "email": "bob@bob.com",
  "passord": "12345678",
  "options": {
    "metadata": {
      "first_name": "Bob"
    }
  }
}

Additional user information in the public schema

As previously explained, the alteration of the auth schema may seriously hamper the functionning of Hasura Auth. The metadata field in the auth.users table may tackle some use cases, but in some other cases, we want to keep a certain level of structure in the way data is structured.

In that case, it is possible to create a dedicated table in the public schema, with a user_id foreign key column that would point to the auth.users.id column. It is then possible to add an Hasura object relationship that would join the two tables together.

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