Using Knex/Postgresql What Does This Mean? "error: column "*" does not exist"

Question

I had a project that I shelved for awhile, but recently I dusted it off and updated all the NPM packages. Now when I try to do anything database related (using Knex/Postgresql) I get the error:

error: column "*" does not exist

This will happen with a seemingly harmless query like:

select "*" from "some_table" where "id" = $1

If I run that query directly against the DB:

select * from "some_table" where "id" = 1;

it works fine. But no matter what I try with knex, whether it's running a regular query or trying to reset my whole database, I keep getting that seemingly nonsensical error.

Can anyone explain what it means?

knex.select().table('books') will result in select * - even though this was not your question, ;] — madflow
– madflow, Commented Apr 8, 2019 at 6:18
Please tell also what kind of code you write for knex to generate that query. It is impossible to tell otherwise why generation of that kind of query happen. — Mikael Lepistö
– Mikael Lepistö, Commented Apr 8, 2019 at 20:08
Part of the problem is that I don't know which code exactly is the problem: all of the line in the stacktrace are node_modules or system calls, and again I get the error both when trying to run the site or when trying to run migrations (and my site has many queries involving this table). But thanks to the answer, I can now at least start tracking it down. — machineghost
– machineghost, Commented Apr 8, 2019 at 23:39

Laurenz Albe · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-08 05:49:20Z

2

The double quotes around the * cause it not to be interpreted as “all columns”, but as a column with that very name.

answered Apr 8, 2019 at 5:49

Laurenz Albe

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2 Comments

machineghost Over a year ago

I'm not quite sure why my code went from selecting * to selecting "*", just from an npm update, but apparently that's what happened, and I can work from there. Thanks!

machineghost Over a year ago

Just a follow-up for anyone else reading this later: I figured out that the problem was that Knex went from using the syntax .select('*') to create a SELECT * FROM ... clause, to a syntax of just .select(). Making that change in your code should fix the issue.

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