wrangler uses local D1 when --remote flag is specified

[Shotster]

Which Cloudflare product(s) does this pertain to?

D1

What versions & operating system are you using?

wrangler 4.11.1, macOS (Intel)

Please provide a link to a minimal reproduction

No response

Describe the Bug

When I use the following command in my local terminal...

wrangler d1 execute rate_limits_db --remote --command " 
  CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS rate_limits (
    key TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
    last_request INTEGER
  );"

...I get the following error...

🌀 Executing on remote database rate_limits_db (local-rate-limits-db-id):
🌀 To execute on your local development database, remove the --remote flag from your wrangler command.

✘ [ERROR] A request to the Cloudflare API (/accounts/[redacted-cf-account-id]/d1/database/local-rate-limits-db-id/query) failed.

  Invalid property: databaseId => Invalid uuid [code: 7400]

This indicates wrangler is using the id of the local D1 instance of the same name despite the --remote flag being used, which seems incorrect. IOW, the name of the local and remote DB is the same, but the id is different of course; and wrangler is using the wrong one.

Please provide any relevant error logs

No response

[penalosa]

@Shotster the ID used for a D1 database locally is the same as that used for the D1 database remotely, and when deploying. Despite the ID being the same, the data is not (because one is local and one is remote). It looks like you have your D1 ID set to local-rate-limits-db-id in your Wrangler config file—could you update that to whatever the ID of your remote database is?

[Shotster]

Hmm, I see. So it's different from the way KV namespace id's behave? With local KV, the id is just an arbitrary string. Maybe I should use preview_database_id as my staging D1 as well. Thanks for the clarification. I guess I misunderstood.

[penalosa]

It's exactly the same as KV—with KV the ID is the same across local and remote as well (if you try and deploy a Worker with your KV namespace ID set to an arbitrary string you'll see an error).

Additionally, as you say, you can set preview_database_id if you want wrangler dev --remote to access a different DB than your deployed Worker.

[Shotster]

if you try and deploy a Worker with your KV namespace ID set to an arbitrary string you'll see an error

FYI...

I've been deploying for months, and I've never had an error. I'm using environments though. In addition to the dev environment configured with options at the root of the wrangler config file, I also have staging and live environments; and I always deploy to one of those, so everything actually works as expected. I use arbitrary strings as local id's for KV and D1 at the config file root, but I use the auto-generated id's for staging and live.

That's why I assumed the D1 issue was a bug, because everything works as expected, including deployment. It's was only when I attempted to create a remote table that I encountered the error.

At any rate, I'm not going to change anything on my end since everything works fine. I'll just manage D1 databases via the dashboard instead of command line.

I wonder, though, if there should be an --env option for the wrangler d1 execute command. That would make a lot of sense to me - i.e. just tell it which environment you want to use.