Question

I have a Rails app with some basic models. The website displays data retrieved from other sources. So I need to write a Ruby script that creates new instances in my database. I know I can do that with the test hooks, but I’m not sure that makes sense here.

I’m not sure what this task should look like, how I can invoke it, or where it should go in my source tree (lib\tasks?).

For example, here’s my first try:

require 'active_record' require '../app/models/mymodel.rb'  test = MyModel.new test.name = 'test' test.save 

This fails because it can’t get a connection to the database. This makes sense in a vague way to my newbie brain, since presumably Rails is doing all the magic work behind the scenes to set all that stuff up. So how do I set up my little script?

Answer 1

I agree with the answer above but you have to include => :environment in your task or it will not load the Rails environment.

e.g.,

namespace :send do   namespace :trial do     namespace :expiry do       desc 'Sends out emails to people who's accounts are about to expire'       task :warnings => :environment do         User.trial_about_to_expire.has_not_been_notified_of_trial_expiry.each do |user|           UserMailer.deliver_trial_expiring_warning(user)           user.notified_of_trial_expiry = true           user.save         end       end     end   end end