Question

So I’m finally ready to allow some friends to use my Ruby on Rails app, which I’m hosting on Heroku. I want to start getting some feedback as I’m still developing.

What happens if I need alter to the database in some way? There will be data in the database, so I will have to change the data to reflect the updates in the database, but I’m not sure how this is done. Thanks for reading.

Answer 1

Normally the best practice is to create a production database for real users. (Even though your is app still in beta stages). Having a separate production and development database will make your life lot easier.

Ex: development databases often have corrupted data, meaning less dummy data etc..

• When changing your data structure you
  can do followings
• always do your changes with a
  migration (Its easy to revert,
  rollback etc)
• when your are inserting values to a
  table, create a migration for that.
  (This will save you from uploading
  same data multiple times)
• When you write a migration, always
  make sure you have the proper
  rollback method (self.down)
• Always you default values

cheers

sameera