Migrating DATA - not just schema, Rails

Question

Sometimes, data migrations are required. As time passes, code changes and migrations using your domain model are no longer valid and migrations fail. What a

Answer 1

Some times 'migrating data' could not be performed as a part of schema migration, like discussed above. Sometimes 'migrating data' means 'fix historical data inconstancies' or 'update your Solr/Elasticsearch' index, so its a complex task. For these kind of tasks, check out this gem https://github.com/OffgridElectric/rails-data-migrations

This gem was designed to decouple Rails schema migrations from data migrations, so it wont cause downtimes at deploy time and make it easy to manage in overall

Answer 2

This is a perfect example of the Using Models in Your Migrations

class ChangeFromPartnerAppliedToAppliedAt < ActiveRecord::Migration
  class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  end

  def up
    User.all.each do |user|
      user.applied_at = user.partner_application_at
      user.save
   end
 end

Edited after Mischa's comment

class ChangeFromPartnerAppliedToAppliedAt < ActiveRecord::Migration
  class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  end

  def up
    User.update_all('applied_at = partner_application_at')
  end
 end

Answer 3

Best practice is: don't use models in migrations. Migrations change the way AR maps, so do not use them at all. Do it all with SQL. This way it will always work.

This:

User.all.each do |user|
  user.applied_at = user.partner_application_at
  user.save
end

I would do like this

update "UPDATE users SET applied_at=partner_application_at"