Question

I made an app in Ruby on Rails and now I want to get it hosted. However, they require that I use MySQL and I set it up using sqLite3. Is there any way to convert it to use MySQL?

Answer 1

Step 0

To be safe, I recommend experimenting a bit with this technique in a virtual machine. Save yourself a bunch of heartache and build a virtual machine, check out your code, and have a safe playground that you can throw away if tragedy strikes.

Step 1

Make a backup copy of your database.yml file.

(from your application root)

cp config/database.yml config.database.yml.sqlite3

Step 2

Make a backup copy of your data

For Rails 3, install the YAML DB gem: https://github.com/ludicast/yaml_db
by running

gem install yaml_db

and then add to your Gemfile.

gem 'yaml_db'

For Rails 2.x install the YAML DB plugin:

script/plugin install git://github.com/adamwiggins/yaml_db.git

Run the dump task

rake db:dump

Step 3

Update your config/database.yml file. You will find entries like

development:
  adapter: sqlite3
  database: db/development.sqlite3
  timeout: 5000
test:
  adapter: sqlite3
  database: db/test.sqlite3
  timeout: 5000
production:
  adapter: sqlite3
  database: db/production.sqlite3
  timeout: 5000

Change them to

development:
  adapter: mysql
  encoding: utf8
  reconnect: false
  database: **myapp_development**
  pool: 5
  username: **root**
  password: **supersecretpassword**
  **socket: /opt/local/var/run/mysql5/mysqld.sock**
test:
  adapter: mysql
  encoding: utf8
  reconnect: false
  database: **myapp_test**
  pool: 5
  username: **root**
  password: **supersecretpassword**
  socket: **/opt/local/var/run/mysql5/mysqld.sock**

production:
  adapter: mysql
  encoding: utf8
  reconnect: false
  database: **myapp_production**
  pool: 5
  username: **root**
  password: **supersecretpassword**
  socket: **/opt/local/var/run/mysql5/mysqld.sock**

Be sure to update the values surrounded by asterix as appropriate for your platform! The socket value is only good for Mac OSX using MacPorts. Most flavors of linux do not require this value.

Step 5

If you have some errors in the following step, you might have to install the mysql or mysql2 gem:

sudo gem install mysql

or

sudo gem install mysql2

Have rake create your database

rake db:create
rake db:schema:load

Step 6

Use YamlDb to reload your data into MySql

rake db:load