Project

database-cloner-rails

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database-cloner-rails provides two rake tasks for moving database records between Rails environments. `rake database:download` dumps all ActiveRecord model records to plain Ruby files (Model.create(...) statements). `rake database:upload` replays those files to restore records in the target database. Useful for seeding a staging environment from production data, creating snapshots before destructive migrations, or sharing realistic test data across a team. Supports optional MODELS filtering: `rake database:download MODELS=users,posts` to dump only specific tables. The dump directory is created automatically.
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 Popularity
Downloads
3,974
Stars
0
Forks
0
Watchers
0
 Releases
Current version
1.1.1
Total releases
4
First release
2014-12-11
Latest release
2026-05-31
 Issues
Open Issues
8
Closed Issues
2
Total Issues
10
Issue Closure Rate
20%
 Development
Primary Language
Ruby
Licenses
MIT
Average date of last 50 commits
2026-05-31
Reverse Dependencies
0

 Dependencies

Development

activerecord
>= 5.0
activesupport
>= 5.0
rspec
~> 3.12
sqlite3
~> 1.7

Runtime

rails
>= 5.0
 Project Readme

database-cloner-rails

A Rails gem that provides Rake tasks to back up and restore your database records across environments.

How it works

The gem iterates over all ActiveRecord models in your app, serializes their records to Ruby files, and can replay those files to restore the data. Useful for seeding a staging environment from production data or creating snapshots.

Installation

Add this line to your Gemfile:

gem 'database-cloner-rails'

Then run:

bundle install

Usage

Download (backup)

Dumps all records from every model into individual .rb files under lib/tasks/database_cloner/db_dump/:

rake database:download

Each file contains Model.create(...) calls — one per record — with id, created_at, and updated_at stripped out.

Upload (restore)

Replays the dumped files to recreate records in the current database:

rake database:upload

If a model's dump file fails to load, it prints a warning and continues with the rest.

Notes

  • Only models that can be resolved via classify.safe_constantize are included.
  • Records are ordered by id during the dump.
  • The db_dump/ directory must exist before running database:download.