Rake in Rails: should I be using db:reset?

Question

I'm a little confused by the intended use of the default Rails Rake tasks, and would like advice on whether I should be using db:reset or writing a custom Rake task. Nothing clever, just daily housekeeping, and I may well be missing an obvious doc as I'm new to Rails.

My problem: I want to throw away my database and run from a completely clean setup, in order that I can be sure the database contains known data only. This is useful for demo prep, for debugging, and for making sure Jenkins is comparing like-with-like in tests.

Currently, I'm writing this:

bin/rake db:drop:all db:create:all db:migrate db:seed db:test:prepare

This is a lot to type, but leaves seed data only in both dev and test databases. I am unsure how this differs from db:reset, which would be more convenient to type.

Should I use db:reset or write a custom db:from_scratch task?

Answer 1

You should be using:

rake db:reset

This will drop the database, recreate it and load the current schema into it.

For a full list of rake db tasks:

rake --describe db

If your requirements change then it would be better to write a custom rake task, where you can apply your own customisation.

Answer 2

If you're not sure what a rake task does, then I would suggest not using it. In this case, you're probably ok, however db:reset is not the equivalent to what you are doing above. db:reset recreates the database from scheme.rb, this may be different as you could have written migrations that have not yet been run.

I would suggest that you use a custom rake task, you can then modify it to fit your exact purposes, especially if you want to perform other tasks as well (for example tagging in git)