Best way to export a database table to a YAML file?

Question

I have some data in my development database that I would like to utilize as fixtures in my test environment. What is the best way in Rails 2.x to export a database table to a YAML fixture?

Answer 1

There is a rake task for this. You can specify RAILS_ENV if needed; the default is the development environment:

rake db:fixtures:dump     # Create YAML test fixtures from data in an existing database. 

Answer 2

I have been using YamlDb to save the state of my database.

Install it with the following command:

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

Use the rake task to dump the contents of Rails database to db/data.yml

rake db:data:dump 

Use the rake task to load the contents of db/data.yml into the database

rake db:data:load 

This is the creators homepage:

http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2007/11/23/yamldb_for_databaseindependent_data_dumps/