How to create a new database from within a Rails app?

Question

Hi all,

I'm working on a Rails app that has one database per account. (I know this is a controversial approach in itself, but I'm confident it's the right one in this case.)

I'd like to automate entirely the process of creating a new user account, which means I need to be able create a new database and populate it with some seed data programatically from within a Rails app.

My question, then, is how best to do this? I don't think I can just run migrations from within the app (or, if I can, how?), and just running the straight SQL queries within the app with hardcoded CREATE TABLE statements seems a really unwieldy way of doing things. What approach should I take, then?

Thanks in advance for your help!

David