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

Answer 1

Very simple gem will create yaml fixtures from existing database...

github.com/vanboom/yaml_dump

Works with Rails 4.

Answer 2

I used this in Rails 6:

# How to run:
# rake fixtures:import_db_table[my_table]
namespace :fixtures do
  desc 'Convert development table into Rails test fixtures'
  task :import_db_table, [:table_name] => :environment do |_task, args|
    begin
      table_name = args[:table_name]
      raise "Missing table name" if table_name.blank?
      conter = '000'
      file_path = "#{Rails.root}/spec/fixtures/#{table_name}.yml"
      ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection
      File.open(file_path, 'w') do |file|
        rows = ActiveRecord::Base.connection.select_all("SELECT * FROM #{table_name}")
        data = rows.each_with_object({}) do |record, hash|
          suffix = record['id'].blank? ? conter.succ! : record['id']
          hash["#{table_name.singularize}_#{suffix}"] = record
        end
        puts "Writing table '#{table_name}' to '#{file_path}'"
        file.write(data.to_yaml)
      end
    ensure
      ActiveRecord::Base.connection.close if ActiveRecord::Base.connection
    end
  end
end

Extracted from here (which imports all tables).

Answer 3

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 4

Iron Fixture Extractor was built for exactly this purpose. It's particularly good for situations where you want to use different fixture sets for different testing scenarios (rather than having all fixtures for all tests). It provides functionality for extracting, loading, rebuilding fixtures, truncating tables, or snagging particular hashes from your fixture yaml files.

Answer 5

This plugin will add the functionality you want. It was extracted from ActiveRecord so no longer comes by default.

script/plugin install http://github.com/topfunky/ar_fixtures

Then run:

rake db:fixtures:dump MODEL=ModelName