RoR environment in Ruby standalone script

Question

I want to run a standalone ruby script in which I need my RoR environment to be used. Specifically, I need my models extending ActionMailer and ActiveRecord. I also need to read the database configuration from my database.yml. How do I go about it?

Answer 1

The easiest way is to change the shebang of your script from :

#!/usr/bin/ruby

to

#!/path/to/your/rails/script/runner

Et voilà, your script will be run with the full rails environment loaded. You can also run your script as ./my_script -e production to have it run with the production database.

Answer 2

Check out this thread: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/293302/how-do-i-run-ruby-tasks-that-use-my-rails-models

Essentially it boils down to:

require "#{ENV['RAILS_ROOT']}/config/environment.rb"

Have fun!

Answer 3

I think the best way to do this is to make it a rake task.

   # lib/tasks/mystuff.rake
   desc 'do my stuff'
   task :my_stuff => [:environment] do
     # do my stuff
   end

The [:environment] stanza loads the rails environment.