Rails remove old models with migrations

Question

I have a bunch of rails models that i'm re-writing into a single model to simplify my code and reduce unnecessary tables.

I'm wondering what the best way to delete a model class and its table is. I want past migrations to still succeed, but I don't want to leave the empty models lying around. Do I have to manually delete the old migrations that reference these models, then manually delete the class files?

Does anyone have any tips for the best way to do this?

Answer 1

All in one solution.

Run the following commands:

rails destroy model ModelName
rails g migration DropTableModelName

The former will generate a new migration file which should looks like this:

class DropTableModelName < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    drop_table :model_name
  end
end

Now run db:migrate and you're done.

Answer 2

If you'd like to completely get rid of of a model and its table do this:

rails destroy model Name