Using ActiveRecord::Base.transaction in a rake task?

Question

I am writing a rake task which, at one point, uses a custom YAML file import method to seed the database.

The rake task looks like:

desc "Seed the database with production/ data."
task :production => :environment do     
  import_yaml 'seed/production'
end

At one point in the import code, I have:

ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do

Trying to run the rake task throws:

You have a nil object when you didn't expect it!
You might have expected an instance of ActiveRecord::Base.
The error occurred while evaluating nil.[]

The stack trace points to the aforementioned line in the code.

Is there a way to instantiate ActiveRecord::Base during a rake task?

Thanks!

Answer 1

maybe you have not included the 'environment' in the rake task?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2791321/rake-task-cant-access-rails-cache/2791337

task (:my_rake_task => :environment) do
    # ....
end

without the => :environment you will not have access to any of your rails app models

Answer 2

Turned out it was an error in the import_yaml function (was passing a filename instead of a File object, which confused custom yaml import code further down the pipeline).

Thanks for help!