Generate models from existing tables using Rails 3

Question

Using Rails 3.2.2 and ruby 1.9.3dev and mysql

I am new to ruby and rails. We have an existing database with a couple hundred tables. We would like to try out rails to see if it would be a positive change from PHP & ZendFramework.

Migrating data into another database is not an option for us because we have several other applications currently using this database. We wanted to "attach" a rails project to the existing database.

The part I am struggling is generating all the models from our existing database.

I seen a couple of older posts talking about some automated techniques including Magic Model Generator. While others talked about there is no way to do this, or you just have create them all manually.

I was not successful in generating models using Magic Model Generator (perhaps rails 2 only?)

Long ago, when we switched to ZendFramework, I wrote a quick script to analyze the database and generate all the model files for us. It would seem this would be a somewhat common scenario.

Note: We use ID instead of id and many have many foreign_key relationships.

So I wanted to ask the community what is the best (way/practice) to handle this?

Tanzeeb Khalili · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-07 05:47:47Z

2

It's not that difficult, just takes a bit more configuration. Here's a basic template for a model:

class YourIdealModelName < ActiveRecord::Base
  self.table_name = `actual_table_name`
  self.primary_key = `ID`

  belongs_to :other_ideal_model, 
    :foreign_key => 'foreign_key_on_other_table'

  has_many :some_other_ideal_models, 
    :foreign_key => 'foreign_key_on_this_table', 
    :primary_key => 'primary_key_on_other_table'
end

answered Jul 7, 2012 at 5:47

Tanzeeb Khalili

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3 Comments

Michael Over a year ago

Thanks for the template, this was actually the route I was considering. However, I thought there would be a tool which could do this already.

Tanzeeb Khalili Over a year ago

Instead of magic models generator, you can try magic models. It won't generate the model files but you will have them available in your app, and I've successfully used it in a rails 3 app.

Tanzeeb Khalili Over a year ago

You can start with this: github.com/drnic/dr-nic-magic-models You will need to do some hackery to get this working on Rails 3.

Ismael · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-29 20:24:04Z

0

I am no expert and even had researched about this. Without thinking to much first solution in my mind is to make the models and migrations according to the rails way so you don't have any problem, for example key and foreign key naming. If you have already some data you should migrate it to the rails db.

One reason to do this is that models are suppose not to be only data accessors but also contain the business logic

answered Mar 29, 2012 at 20:24

Ismael

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1 Comment

Michael Over a year ago

Thanks for your idea. Migrating data into another database is not an option for us because we have several other applications currently using this database. We wanted to "attach" a rails project to the database.

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