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A Guide to The Rails Command LineRails comes with every command line tool you’ll need to

Create a Rails application

Generate models, controllers, database migrations, and unit tests

Start a development server

Mess with objects through an interactive shell

Profile and benchmark your new creation

This tutorial assumes you have basic Rails knowledge from reading the

Getting Started with Rails Guide.

Chapters

Command Line Basics

rails new

rails server

rails generate

rails console

rails dbconsole

rails plugin

1.

Ruby on Rails Guides: A Guide to The Rails Command Line http://guides.rubyonrails.org/command_line.html

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This Guide is based on Rails 3.0. Some of the code shown here will not work in earlier versions of Rails.

1 Command Line Basics

There are a few commands that are absolutely critical to your everyday usage of Rails. In the order of how much you’ll probably use them are:

rails console

rails server

rake

rails generate

rails dbconsole

rails new app_name

Let’s create a simple Rails application to step through each of these commands in context.

1.1 rails new

The first thing we’ll want to do is create a new Rails application by running the rails new command after installing Rails.

You know you need the rails gem installed by typing gem install rails first, if you don’t have this installed, follow the instructions in the Rails 3

runner

destroy

about

The Rails Advanced Command Line

Rails with Databases and SCM

server with Different Backends

The Rails Generation: Generators

Rake is Ruby Make

2.


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Release Notes

Rails will set you up with what seems like a huge amount of stuff for such a tiny command! You’ve got the entire Rails directory structure now with all the code you

need to run our simple application right out of the box.

This output will seem very familiar when we get to the generate command. Creepy foreshadowing!

1.2 rails server

Let’s try it! The rails server command launches a small web server named WEBrick which comes bundled with Ruby. You’ll use this any time you want to view

your work through a web browser.

$ rails new commandsapp create create README create .gitignore create Rakefile create config.ru create Gemfile create app ... create tmp/cache create tmp/pids create vendor/plugins create vendor/plugins/.gitkeep


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WEBrick isn’t your only option for serving Rails. We’ll get to that in a later section.

Without any prodding of any kind, rails server will run our new shiny Rails app:

With just three commands we whipped up a Rails server listening on port 3000. Go to your browser and open http://localhost:3000, you will see a basic rails app

running.

1.3 rails generate

The rails generate command uses templates to create a whole lot of things. You can always find out what’s available by running rails generate by itself. Let’s

do that:

$ cd commandsapp$ rails server=> Booting WEBrick=> Rails 3.0.0 application starting in development on http://0.0.0.0:3000=> Call with ‐d to detach=> Ctrl‐C to shutdown server[2010‐04‐18 03:20:33] INFO WEBrick 1.3.1[2010‐04‐18 03:20:33] INFO ruby 1.8.7 (2010‐01‐10) [x86_64‐linux][2010‐04‐18 03:20:33] INFO WEBrick::HTTPServer#start: pid=26086 port=3000

$ rails generateUsage: rails generate generator [options] [args] ...... Please choose a generator below. Rails: controller generator ...


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You can install more generators through generator gems, portions of plugins you’ll undoubtedly install, and you can even create your own!

Using generators will save you a large amount of time by writing boilerplate code, code that is necessary for the app to work, but not necessary for you to spend

time writing. That’s what we have computers for.

Let’s make our own controller with the controller generator. But what command should we use? Let’s ask the generator:

All Rails console utilities have help text. As with most *NIX utilities, you can try adding ‐‐help or ‐h to the end, for example rails server ‐‐help.

...

$ rails generate controllerUsage: rails generate controller ControllerName [options] ...... Example: rails generate controller CreditCard open debit credit close Credit card controller with URLs like /credit_card/debit. Controller: app/controllers/credit_card_controller.rb Views: app/views/credit_card/debit.html.erb [...] Helper: app/helpers/credit_card_helper.rb Test: test/functional/credit_card_controller_test.rb Modules Example: rails generate controller 'admin/credit_card' suspend late_fee Credit card admin controller with URLs /admin/credit_card/suspend. Controller: app/controllers/admin/credit_card_controller.rb


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The controller generator is expecting parameters in the form of generate controller ControllerName action1 action2. Let’s make a Greetings controller

with an action of hello, which will say something nice to us.

What all did this generate? It made sure a bunch of directories were in our application, and created a controller file, a functional test file, a helper for the view, and a

view file.

Check out the controller and modify it a little (in app/controllers/greetings_controller.rb):ma

Views: app/views/admin/credit_card/debit.html.erb [...] Helper: app/helpers/admin/credit_card_helper.rb Test: test/functional/admin/credit_card_controller_test.rb

$ rails generate controller Greetings hello create app/controllers/greetings_controller.rb invoke erb create app/views/greetings create app/views/greetings/hello.html.erb error rspec [not found] invoke helper create app/helpers/greetings_helper.rb error rspec [not found]

class GreetingsController < ApplicationController def


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Then the view, to display our message (in app/views/greetings/hello.html.erb):

Deal. Go check it out in your browser. Fire up your server. Remember? rails server at the root of your Rails application should do it.

Make sure that you do not have any “tilde backup” files in app/views/(controller), or else WEBrick will not show the expected output. This seems to

be a bug in Rails 2.3.0.

The URL will be http://localhost:3000/greetings/hello.

hello @message = "Hello, how are you today?" end end

<h1>A Greeting for You!</h1><p><%= @message %></p>

$ rails server=> Booting WEBrick...


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With a normal, plain-old Rails application, your URLs will generally follow the pattern of http://(host)/(controller)/(action), and a URL like http://(host)/(controller) will hit

the index action of that controller.

Rails comes with a generator for data models too:

For a list of available field types, refer to the API documentation for the column method for the TableDefinition class.

But instead of generating a model directly (which we’ll be doing later), let’s set up a scaffold. A scaffold in Rails is a full set of model, database migration for that

model, controller to manipulate it, views to view and manipulate the data, and a test suite for each of the above.

We will set up a simple resource called “HighScore” that will keep track of our highest score on video games we play.

$ rails generate modelUsage: rails generate model ModelName [field:type, field:type] ... Examples: rails generate model account Model: app/models/account.rb Test: test/unit/account_test.rb Fixtures: test/fixtures/accounts.yml Migration: db/migrate/XXX_add_accounts.rb rails generate model post title:string body:text published:boolean Creates a Post model with a string title, text body, and published flag.

$ rails generate scaffold HighScore game:string score:integer exists app/models/


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exists app/controllers/ exists app/helpers/ create app/views/high_scores create app/views/layouts/ exists test/functional/ create test/unit/ create public/stylesheets/ create app/views/high_scores/index.html.erb create app/views/high_scores/show.html.erb create app/views/high_scores/new.html.erb create app/views/high_scores/edit.html.erb create app/views/layouts/high_scores.html.erb create public/stylesheets/scaffold.css create app/controllers/high_scores_controller.rb create test/functional/high_scores_controller_test.rb create app/helpers/high_scores_helper.rb route map.resources :high_scoresdependency model exists app/models/ exists test/unit/ create test/fixtures/ create app/models/high_score.rb create test/unit/high_score_test.rb create test/fixtures/high_scores.yml


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The generator checks that there exist the directories for models, controllers, helpers, layouts, functional and unit tests, stylesheets, creates the views, controller,

model and database migration for HighScore (creating the high_scores table and fields), takes care of the route for the resource, and new tests for everything.

The migration requires that we migrate, that is, run some Ruby code (living in that 20100209025147_create_high_scores.rb) to modify the schema of our

database. Which database? The sqlite3 database that Rails will create for you when we run the rake db:migrate command. We’ll talk more about Rake in-depth in

a little while.

Let’s talk about unit tests. Unit tests are code that tests and makes assertions about code. In unit testing, we take a little part of code, say a method of a model, and

test its inputs and outputs. Unit tests are your friend. The sooner you make peace with the fact that your quality of life will drastically increase when you unit test your

code, the better. Seriously. We’ll make one in a moment.

Let’s see the interface Rails created for us.

Go to your browser and open http://localhost:3000/high_scores, now we can create new high scores (55,160 on Space Invaders!)

1.4 rails console

The console command lets you interact with your Rails application from the command line. On the underside, rails console uses IRB, so if you’ve ever used it,

exists db/migrate create db/migrate/20081217071914_create_high_scores.rb

$ rake db:migrate(in /home/foobar/commandsapp)== CreateHighScores: migrating ===============================================‐‐ create_table(:high_scores) ‐> 0.0026s== CreateHighScores: migrated (0.0028s) ======================================

$ rails server


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you’ll be right at home. This is useful for testing out quick ideas with code and changing data server-side without touching the website.

1.5 rails dbconsole

rails dbconsole figures out which database you’re using and drops you into whichever command line interface you would use with it (and figures out the command

line parameters to give to it, too!). It supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite and SQLite3.

1.6 rails plugin

The rails plugin command simplifies plugin management; think a miniature version of the Gem utility. Let’s walk through installing a plugin. You can call the

sub-command discover, which sifts through repositories looking for plugins, or call source to add a specific repository of plugins, or you can specify the plugin

location directly.

Let’s say you’re creating a website for a client who wants a small accounting system. Every event having to do with money must be logged, and must never be

deleted. Wouldn’t it be great if we could override the behavior of a model to never actually take its record out of the database, but instead, just set a field?

There is such a thing! The plugin we’re installing is called acts_as_paranoid, and it lets models implement a deleted_at column that gets set when you call

destroy. Later, when calling find, the plugin will tack on a database check to filter out “deleted” things.

1.7 runner

runner runs Ruby code in the context of Rails non-interactively. For instance:

$ rails plugin install http://svn.techno‐weenie.net/projects/plugins/acts_as_paranoid+ ./CHANGELOG+ ./MIT‐LICENSE......

$ rails runner "Model.long_running_method"


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1.8 destroy

Think of destroy as the opposite of generate. It’ll figure out what generate did, and undo it. Believe you-me, the creation of this tutorial used this command many

times!

$ rails generate model Oops exists app/models/ exists test/unit/ exists test/fixtures/ create app/models/oops.rb create test/unit/oops_test.rb create test/fixtures/oops.yml exists db/migrate create db/migrate/20081221040817_create_oops.rb$ rails destroy model Oops notempty db/migrate notempty db rm db/migrate/20081221040817_create_oops.rb rm test/fixtures/oops.yml rm test/unit/oops_test.rb rm app/models/oops.rb notempty test/fixtures notempty test notempty test/unit notempty test notempty app/models


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1.9 about

Check it: Version numbers for Ruby, RubyGems, Rails, the Rails subcomponents, your application’s folder, the current Rails environment name, your app’s database

adapter, and schema version! about is useful when you need to ask for help, check if a security patch might affect you, or when you need some stats for an existing

Rails installation.

2 The Rails Advanced Command Line

The more advanced uses of the command line are focused around finding useful (even surprising at times) options in the utilities, and fitting utilities to your needs and

specific work flow. Listed here are some tricks up Rails’ sleeve.

2.1 Rails with Databases and SCM

When creating a new Rails application, you have the option to specify what kind of database and what kind of source code management system your application is

going to use. This will save you a few minutes, and certainly many keystrokes.

Let’s see what a ‐‐git option and a ‐‐database=postgresql option will do for us:

notempty app

$ rake aboutAbout your application's environmentRuby version 1.8.7 (x86_64‐linux)RubyGems version 1.3.6Rack version 1.1Rails version 3.0.0Active Record version 3.0.0Action Pack version 3.0.0Active Resource version 3.0.0Action Mailer version 3.0.0Active Support version 3.0.0Middleware ActionDispatch::Static, Rack::Lock, Rack::Runtime, Rails::Rack::Logger, ActionDispatch::ShowExceptApplication root /home/foobar/commandsappEnvironment development


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We had to create the gitapp directory and initialize an empty git repository before Rails would add files it created to our repository. Let’s see what it put in our

database configuration:

$ mkdir gitapp$ cd gitapp$ git initInitialized empty Git repository in .git/$ rails new . ‐‐git ‐‐database=postgresql exists create app/controllers create app/helpers...... create tmp/cache create tmp/pids create Rakefileadd 'Rakefile' create READMEadd 'README' create app/controllers/application_controller_.rbadd 'app/controllers/application_controller_.rb' create app/helpers/application_helper.rb... create log/test.logadd 'log/test.log'

$ cat config/database.yml# PostgreSQL. Versions 7.4 and 8.x are supported.## Install the ruby‐postgres driver:# gem install ruby‐postgres# On Mac OS X:


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It also generated some lines in our database.yml configuration corresponding to our choice of PostgreSQL for database. The only catch with using the SCM options

is that you have to make your application’s directory first, then initialize your SCM, then you can run the rails new command to generate the basis of your app.

2.2 server with Different Backends

Many people have created a large number different web servers in Ruby, and many of them can be used to run Rails. Since version 2.3, Rails uses Rack to serve its

webpages, which means that any webserver that implements a Rack handler can be used. This includes WEBrick, Mongrel, Thin, and Phusion Passenger (to name a

few!).

For more details on the Rack integration, see Rails on Rack.

To use a different server, just install its gem, then use its name for the first parameter to rails server:

# gem install ruby‐postgres ‐‐ ‐‐include=/usr/local/pgsql# On Windows:# gem install ruby‐postgres# Choose the win32 build.# Install PostgreSQL and put its /bin directory on your path.development: adapter: postgresql encoding: unicode database: gitapp_development pool: 5 username: gitapp password:......

$ sudo gem install mongrelBuilding native extensions. This could take a while...Building native extensions. This could take a while...Successfully installed gem_plugin‐0.2.3Successfully installed fastthread‐1.0.1


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2.3 The Rails Generation: Generators

For a good rundown on generators, see Understanding Generators. A lot of its material is presented here.

Generators are code that generates code. Let’s experiment by building one. Our generator will generate a text file.

The Rails generator by default looks in these places for available generators, where Rails.root is the root of your Rails application, like /home/foobar/commandsapp:

Rails.root/lib/generators

Rails.root/vendor/generators

Inside any plugin with a directory like “generators” or “rails_generators”

~/.rails/generators

Inside any Gem you have installed with a name ending in “_generator”

Inside any Gem installed with a “rails_generators” path, and a file ending in “_generator.rb”

Finally, the builtin Rails generators (controller, model, mailer, etc.)

Let’s try the fourth option (in our home directory), which will be easy to clean up later:

We’ll fill tutorial_test_generator.rb out with:

Successfully installed cgi_multipart_eof_fix‐2.5.0Successfully installed mongrel‐1.1.5......Installing RDoc documentation for mongrel‐1.1.5...$ rails server mongrel=> Booting Mongrel (use 'rails server webrick' to force WEBrick)=> Rails 3.0.0 application starting on http://0.0.0.0:3000...

$ mkdir ‐p ~/.rails/generators/tutorial_test/templates$ touch ~/.rails/generators/tutorial_test/templates/tutorial.erb$ touch ~/.rails/generators/tutorial_test/tutorial_test_generator.rb


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class TutorialTestGenerator < Rails::Generator::Base def initialize(*runtime_args) super(*runtime_args) @tut_args = runtime_args end def manifest record do |m| m.directory "public" m.template "tutorial.erb", File.join("public", "tutorial.txt"), :assigns => { :args =>


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We take whatever args are supplied, save them to an instance variable, and literally copying from the Rails source, implement a manifest method, which calls

record with a block, and we:

Check there’s a public directory. You bet there is.

Run the ERb template called “tutorial.erb”.

Save it into “Rails.root/public/tutorial.txt”.

Pass in the arguments we saved through the :assign parameter.

Next we’ll build the template:

Then we’ll make sure it got included in the list of available generators:

SWEET! Now let’s generate some text, yeah!

@tut_args } end endend

$ cat ~/.rails/generators/tutorial_test/templates/tutorial.erbI'm a template! I got assigned some args:<%= require 'pp'; PP.pp(args, "") %>

$ rails generate......Installed Generators User: tutorial_test


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And the result:

Tada!

2.4 Rake is Ruby Make

Rake is a standalone Ruby utility that replaces the Unix utility ‘make’, and uses a ‘Rakefile’ and .rake files to build up a list of tasks. In Rails, Rake is used for

common administration tasks, especially sophisticated ones that build off of each other.

You can get a list of Rake tasks available to you, which will often depend on your current directory, by typing rake ‐‐tasks. Each task has a description, and should

help you find the thing you need.

$ rails generate tutorial_test arg1 arg2 arg3 exists public create public/tutorial.txt

$ cat public/tutorial.txtI'm a template! I got assigned some args:[["arg1", "arg2", "arg3"], {:collision=>:ask, :quiet=>false, :generator=>"tutorial_test", :command=>:create}]

rake ‐‐tasks(in /home/foobar/commandsapp)rake db:abort_if_pending_migrations # Raises an error if there are pending migrationsrake db:charset # Retrieves the charset for the current environment's database


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Let’s take a look at some of these 80 or so rake tasks.

2.4.1 db: Database

The most common tasks of the db: Rake namespace are migrate and create, and it will pay off to try out all of the migration rake tasks (up, down, redo, reset).

rake db:version is useful when troubleshooting, telling you the current version of the database.

2.4.2 doc: Documentation

If you want to strip out or rebuild any of the Rails documentation (including this guide!), the doc: namespace has the tools. Stripping documentation is mainly useful

for slimming your codebase, like if you’re writing a Rails application for an embedded platform.

2.4.3 gems: Ruby gems

You can specify which gems your application uses, and rake gems:install will install them for you. Look at your environment.rb to learn how with the config.gem

directive.

gems:unpack will unpack, that is internalize your application’s Gem dependencies by copying the Gem code into your vendor/gems directory. By doing this you

increase your codebase size, but simplify installation on new hosts by eliminating the need to run rake gems:install, or finding and installing the gems your

application uses.

2.4.4 notes: Code note enumeration

These tasks will search through your code for commented lines beginning with “FIXME”, “OPTIMIZE”, “TODO”, or any custom annotation (like XXX) and show you

them.

2.4.5 rails: Rails-specific tasks

In addition to the gems:unpack task above, you can also unpack the Rails backend specific gems into vendor/rails by calling rake rails:freeze:gems, to unpack

the version of Rails you are currently using, or rake rails:freeze:edge to unpack the most recent (cutting, bleeding edge) version.

rake db:collation # Retrieves the collation for the current environment's databaserake db:create # Create the database defined in config/database.yml for the current Rails.env......rake tmp:pids:clear # Clears all files in tmp/pidsrake tmp:sessions:clear # Clears all files in tmp/sessionsrake tmp:sockets:clear # Clears all files in tmp/sockets


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When you have frozen the Rails gems, Rails will prefer to use the code in vendor/rails instead of the system Rails gems. You can “thaw” by running rake

rails:unfreeze.

After upgrading Rails, it is useful to run rails:update, which will update your config and scripts directories, and upgrade your Rails-specific javascript (like

Scriptaculous).

2.4.6 test: Rails tests

A good description of unit testing in Rails is given in A Guide to Testing Rails Applications

Rails comes with a test suite called Test::Unit. It is through the use of tests that Rails itself is so stable, and the slew of people working on Rails can prove that

everything works as it should.

The test: namespace helps in running the different tests you will (hopefully!) write.

2.4.7 time: Timezones

You can list all the timezones Rails knows about with rake time:zones:all, which is useful just in day-to-day life.

2.4.8 tmp: Temporary files

The tmp directory is, like in the *nix /tmp directory, the holding place for temporary files like sessions (if you’re using a file store for files), process id files, and cached

actions. The tmp: namespace tasks will help you clear them if you need to if they’ve become overgrown, or create them in case of an rm ‐rf * gone awry.

2.4.9 Miscellaneous Tasks

rake stats is great for looking at statistics on your code, displaying things like KLOCs (thousands of lines of code) and your code to test ratio. rake secret will

give you a psuedo-random key to use for your session secret. rake routes will list all of your defined routes, which is useful for tracking down routing problems in

your app, or giving you a good overview of the URLs in an app you’re trying to get familiar with.

Feedback

You're encouraged to help in keeping the quality of this guide.

If you see any typos or factual errors you are confident to patch please clone docrails and push the change yourself. That branch of Rails has public write access.

Commits are still reviewed, but that happens after you've submitted your contribution. docrails is cross-merged with master periodically.


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You may also find incomplete content, or stuff that is not up to date. Please do add any missing documentation for master. Check the Ruby on Rails Guides

Guidelines guide for style and conventions.

Issues may also be reported in Github.

And last but not least, any kind of discussion regarding Ruby on Rails documentation is very welcome in the rubyonrails-docs mailing list.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

"Rails", "Ruby on Rails", and the Rails logo are trademarks of David Heinemeier Hansson. All rights reserved.


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