[Request]: How can I disable the creation of foreign keys?

[SCUT-Crizz]

Summary

I noticed that when the project initializes some tables, foreign keys are automatically created

Anyway I can disable that?

Why is it needed?

Due to certain database specifications of my team, foreign keys are not recommended

Suggested solution(s)

No response

Related issue(s)/PR(s)

No response

[github-actions[bot]]

🤖 I've analyzed your question and here's what I found:

Hi there! 👋

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your question and context with us. We really appreciate your attention to detail and your willingness to help improve Strapi for everyone. I understand how important it is to align Strapi’s database behavior with your team’s specific requirements, especially when it comes to foreign key constraints.

Regarding your question about disabling the creation of foreign keys:
Based on the current Strapi documentation, there is no officially supported configuration or documented method to globally disable the automatic creation of foreign keys when defining relations between content-types. Strapi’s model system is designed to create foreign key constraints in the database to ensure data integrity when you define relations (e.g., oneToOne, oneToMany, manyToOne, manyToMany) in your content-type schemas. This is a core part of how Strapi manages relational data and is not exposed as a configurable option at this time Model Relations.

If your use case requires avoiding foreign keys due to database policies or legacy constraints, unfortunately, the knowledge sources do not provide a built-in way to disable this behavior. This limitation is not currently documented as a configurable feature.

What you can do next:

• If this is a critical blocker or a feature you’d like to see, I highly encourage you to submit a feature request or upvote an existing one on our public feedback board: Strapi Feedback. This helps the core team prioritize features that matter most to the community.
• For advanced or experimental workarounds, you might consider customizing your database migrations or altering the generated tables after Strapi runs its migrations, but please note this is not officially supported and may lead to unexpected issues, especially during upgrades.
• If you’d like to discuss this further or see if others in the community have found creative solutions, our Community Forum and Discord are great places to connect with other Strapi users and contributors.

If you believe this is a bug or a limitation that should be addressed in the core, please let us know and we can flag it for the core team’s attention (@pwizla).

Thank you again for your thoughtful question and for being part of the Strapi community! If you have any more details or follow-up questions, feel free to share them here.

Warm regards,
The Strapi Team

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References:

• Model Relations in Strapi

📚 Relevant documentation:

• Community & Support
• Database configuration - settings configuration object
• Database configuration - Configuration examples
• Database configuration - Configuration structure
• Database configuration - Databases installation
• Frequently Asked Questions - Does Strapi allow me to change the default ID type or name?
• GraphQL plugin - Customization
• GraphQL plugin - Disabling operations in the Shadow CRUD
• Models - Database validations and settings
• Models - Plugin options
• Models - Relations
• Strapi Support Policy - Community resources
• Strapi v4 to Strapi 5 breaking changes

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ℹ️ This response was generated automatically. If this doesn't fully answer your question or if you need further assistance, please mention @pwizla in a comment and a human maintainer will help you.

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💡 For feature requests or product feedback, visit feedback.strapi.io.