Question

How do you add a column to a table using ActiveRecord through the terminal. I am trying to use add_column method but its not working. Any ideas please?

Answer 1

It is better to write a migration and a must if you are working with a team. When you make db changes, then every developer’s environment has to be updated also. Otherwise, you will have some mad developers at you.

rails generate migration AddPartNumberToProducts part_number:string

will generate

class AddPartNumberToProducts < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    add_column :products, :part_number, :string
  end
end

Then you run the migration

rake db:migrate

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/migrations.html

Edit:

For a rails console command line check @tadman’s answer or use what Bengala proposed like

ActiveRecord::Migration.add_column :products, :part_number, :string