How to pass command line arguments to a rake task

Question

I have a rake task that needs to insert a value into multiple databases.

I\'d like to pass this value into the rake task from the command line, or from another

Answer 1

One thing I don't see here is how to handle arbitrary arguments. If you pass arguments that are not listed in the task definition, they are still accessible under args.extras:

task :thing, [:foo] do |task, args|
  puts args[:foo]     # named argument
  puts args.extras    # any additional arguments that were passed
end

Answer 2

While passing parameters, it is better option is an input file, can this be a excel a json or whatever you need and from there read the data structure and variables you need from that including the variable name as is the need. To read a file can have the following structure.

  namespace :name_sapace_task do
    desc "Description task...."
      task :name_task  => :environment do
        data =  ActiveSupport::JSON.decode(File.read(Rails.root+"public/file.json")) if defined?(data)
    # and work whit yoour data, example is data["user_id"]

    end
  end

Example json

{
  "name_task": "I'm a task",
  "user_id": 389,
  "users_assigned": [389,672,524],
  "task_id": 3
}

Execution

rake :name_task 

Answer 3

I use a regular ruby argument in the rake file:

DB = ARGV[1]

then I stub out the rake tasks at the bottom of the file (since rake will look for a task based on that argument name).

task :database_name1
task :database_name2

command line:

rake mytask db_name

this feels cleaner to me than the var=foo ENV var and the task args[blah, blah2] solutions.
the stub is a little jenky, but not too bad if you just have a few environments that are a one-time setup

Answer 4

I've found the answer from these two websites: Net Maniac and Aimred.

You need to have version > 0.8 of rake to use this technique

The normal rake task description is this:

desc 'Task Description'
task :task_name => [:depends_on_taskA, :depends_on_taskB] do
  #interesting things
end

To pass arguments, do three things:

1. Add the argument names after the task name, separated by commas.
2. Put the dependencies at the end using :needs => [...]
3. Place |t, args| after the do. (t is the object for this task)

To access the arguments in the script, use args.arg_name

desc 'Takes arguments task'
task :task_name, :display_value, :display_times, :needs => [:depends_on_taskA, :depends_on_taskB] do |t, args|
  args.display_times.to_i.times do
    puts args.display_value
  end
end

To call this task from the command line, pass it the arguments in []s

rake task_name['Hello',4]

will output

Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello

and if you want to call this task from another task, and pass it arguments, use invoke

task :caller do
  puts 'In Caller'
  Rake::Task[:task_name].invoke('hi',2)
end

then the command

rake caller

will output

In Caller
hi
hi

I haven't found a way to pass arguments as part of a dependency, as the following code breaks:

task :caller => :task_name['hi',2]' do
   puts 'In Caller'
end

Answer 5

If you want to pass named arguments (e.g. with standard OptionParser) you could use something like this:

$ rake user:create -- --user test@example.com --pass 123

note the --, that's necessary for bypassing standard Rake arguments. Should work with Rake 0.9.x, <= 10.3.x.

Newer Rake has changed its parsing of --, and now you have to make sure it's not passed to the OptionParser#parse method, for example with parser.parse!(ARGV[2..-1])

require 'rake'
require 'optparse'
# Rake task for creating an account

namespace :user do |args|
  desc 'Creates user account with given credentials: rake user:create'
  # environment is required to have access to Rails models
  task :create do
    options = {}
    OptionParser.new(args) do |opts|
      opts.banner = "Usage: rake user:create [options]"
      opts.on("-u", "--user {username}","User's email address", String) do |user|
        options[:user] = user
      end
      opts.on("-p", "--pass {password}","User's password", String) do |pass|
        options[:pass] = pass
      end
    end.parse!

    puts "creating user account..."
    u = Hash.new
    u[:email] = options[:user]
    u[:password] = options[:pass]
    # with some DB layer like ActiveRecord:
    # user = User.new(u); user.save!
    puts "user: " + u.to_s
    puts "account created."
    exit 0
  end
end

exit at the end will make sure that the extra arguments won't be interpreted as Rake task.

Also the shortcut for arguments should work:

 rake user:create -- -u test@example.com -p 123

When rake scripts look like this, maybe it's time to look for another tool that would allow this just out of box.

Answer 6

If you can't be bothered to remember what argument position is for what and you want do something like a ruby argument hash. You can use one argument to pass in a string and then regex that string into an options hash.

namespace :dummy_data do
  desc "Tests options hash like arguments"
  task :test, [:options] => :environment do |t, args|
    arg_options = args[:options] || '' # nil catch incase no options are provided
    two_d_array = arg_options.scan(/\W*(\w*): (\w*)\W*/)
    puts two_d_array.to_s + ' # options are regexed into a 2d array'
    string_key_hash = two_d_array.to_h
    puts string_key_hash.to_s + ' # options are in a hash with keys as strings'
    options = two_d_array.map {|p| [p[0].to_sym, p[1]]}.to_h
    puts options.to_s + ' # options are in a hash with symbols'
    default_options = {users: '50', friends: '25', colour: 'red', name: 'tom'}
    options = default_options.merge(options)
    puts options.to_s + ' # default option values are merged into options'
  end
end

And on the command line you get.

$ rake dummy_data:test["users: 100 friends: 50 colour: red"]
[["users", "100"], ["friends", "50"], ["colour", "red"]] # options are regexed into a 2d array
{"users"=>"100", "friends"=>"50", "colour"=>"red"} # options are in a hash with keys as strings
{:users=>"100", :friends=>"50", :colour=>"red"} # options are in a hash with symbols
{:users=>"100", :friends=>"50", :colour=>"red", :name=>"tom"} # default option values are merged into options