Question

I have a Active Record model “car”, I would like to change the name of this model to “train” without changing functionalities inside, that’s only change the name. Also, the table name should be changed to “trains”.

Is there any rails command can do that at onece? Or I have to manually change the name in side the class or migration? If I have to change manually, it’s gonna be complicated, because I have to also change other models which have associations to my “car” model.

Any good suggestions?

Answer 1

I would recommend the following:

1. Change manually the Active Record model class into Train

2. Make migration to change the database table name from cars to trains

3. Make good search to change references from Car to Train.

If you have constantly the need to change database table names, you might want to reconsider naming the tables more abstact way. Like in this case you could have table called vehicles and have the “type” field specifying the type (for instance: car or train).