- Setup a database in a Sinatra application.
- Create and use a Rakefile to run ActiveRecord migrations.
- Use ActiveRecord in a Sinatra application.
Sinatra doesn't come with database support out of the box, but it's relatively easy to configure. In general, we'll be working from templates that have this pre-built, but it's good to understand what's going on under the hood. We're going to practice adding a database to our Sinatra applications.
Fork and clone this repository to get started! We have a basic sinatra
application stubbed out with an app.rb file acting as the controller.
Currently, a few gems are already present in our Gemfile:
gem 'sinatra'
gem 'thin'
gem 'require_all'
group :development do
gem 'shotgun'
gem 'pry'
endTo get Sinatra working with ActiveRecord, First, we'll add three gems to allow
us to use ActiveRecord: activerecord version 5.2, sinatra-activerecord,
and rake. The activerecord gem gives us access to the magical database
mapping and association powers. The rake gem, short for "ruby make", is a
package that lets us quickly create files and folders, and automate tasks such
as database creation, and the sinatra-activerecord gem gives us access to some
awesome Rake tasks. Make sure those three gems are added in your Gemfile:
gem 'sinatra'
gem 'thin'
gem 'require_all'
gem 'activerecord', '5.2'
gem 'sinatra-activerecord'
gem 'rake'Into our development group, we'll add two other gems: sqlite3 and tux.
sqlite3 is our database adapter gem - it's what allows our Ruby application to
communicate with a SQL database. tux will give us an interactive console that
pre-loads our database and ActiveRecord relationships for us. Since we won't use
either of these in production, we put them in our :development group - this
way, they won't get installed on our server when we deploy our application.
gem 'sinatra'
gem 'thin'
gem 'require_all'
gem 'activerecord', '5.2'
gem 'sinatra-activerecord'
gem 'rake'
group :development do
gem 'shotgun'
gem 'pry'
gem 'tux'
gem 'sqlite3', '~> 1.3.6'
endOur Gemfile is up to date - awesome! Go ahead and run bundle install to get
your system up to speed.
We now have access to all of the gems that we need, but we still need to set up
a connection to our database. Add the following block of code to your
environment.rb file (underneath Bundler.require(:default, ENV['SINATRA_ENV'])).
configure :development do
set :database, 'sqlite3:db/database.db'
endThis sets up a connection to a sqlite3 database named "database.db", located in
a folder called "db." If we wanted our .db file to be called dogs.db, we
could simply change the name of this file:
configure :development do
set :database, 'sqlite3:db/dogs.db'
endBut for now, database.db is a great name. Notice that this didn't actually
create those files or folders yet - that's how Rake will help us.
As we mentioned, rake gives us the ability to quickly make files and set up
automated tasks. We define these in a file called Rakefile. First, create a
Rakefile in the root of our project directory. In the Rakefile, we'll
require our config/environment.rb file to load up our environment, as well as
"sinatra/activerecord/rake" to get Rake tasks from the sinatra-activerecord
gem.
require './config/environment'
require 'sinatra/activerecord/rake'In the terminal, type rake -T to view all of the available rake tasks. You
should see the following output:
rake db:create # Creates the database from DATABASE_URL or config/database.yml for...
rake db:create_migration # Create a migration (parameters: NAME, VERSION)
rake db:drop # Drops the database from DATABASE_URL or config/database.yml for t...
rake db:fixtures:load # Load fixtures into the current environment's database
rake db:migrate # Migrate the database (options: VERSION=x, VERBOSE=false, SCOPE=blog)
rake db:migrate:status # Display status of migrations
rake db:rollback # Rolls the schema back to the previous version (specify steps w/ S...
rake db:schema:cache:clear # Clear a db/schema_cache.dump file
rake db:schema:cache:dump # Create a db/schema_cache.dump file
rake db:schema:dump # Create a db/schema.rb file that is portable against any DB suppor...
rake db:schema:load # Load a schema.rb file into the database
rake db:seed # Load the seed data from db/seeds.rb
rake db:setup # Create the database, load the schema, and initialize with the see...
rake db:structure:dump # Dump the database structure to db/structure.sql
rake db:structure:load # Recreate the databases from the structure.sql file
rake db:version # Retrieves the current schema version numberLet's test out our handiwork by creating a dogs table with two columns: name
and breed. First, let's create our migration:
rake db:create_migration NAME=create_dogsYou should see the following output:
=># db/migrate/20150914201353_create_dogs.rbThe beginning of the file is a timestamp - yours should reflect the time that
your create_dogs file was created! You've now created your first database
migration inside of the db folder.
Inside of the migration file, remove the default change method (we'll come
back to this), and add methods for up and down.
class CreateDogs < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.2]
def up
end
def down
end
endImportant: When we create migrations with ActiveRecord, we must specify the
version we're using just after ActiveRecord::Migration. In this case, we're
using 5.2, so all the examples here will show ActiveRecord::Migration[5.2].
This version may differ depending on the lab. If this number does not match
the version in your Gemfile.lock, your migration will cause an error.
Our up method should create our table with name and breed columns. Our
down method should drop the table.
class CreateDogs < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.2]
def up
create_table :dogs do |t|
t.string :name
t.string :breed
end
end
def down
drop_table :dogs
end
endNow, run the migration from the terminal with rake db:migrate.
rake db:migrate SINATRA_ENV=developmentWhy add SINATRA_ENV=development, you might ask? Well, remember the top line of
config/environment.rb? It's telling Sinatra that it should use the
"development" environment for both shotgun and the testing suite. Therefore,
we want to make sure our migrations run on the same environment as well, and
specifying SINATRA_ENV=development allows us to do that.
You should see the following output:
== 20150914201353 CreateDogs: migrating =======================================
-- create_table(:dogs)
-> 0.0019s
== 20150914201353 CreateDogs: migrated (0.0020s) ==============================The change method is actually a shorter way of writing up and down methods.
We can refactor our migration to look like this:
class CreateDogs < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.2]
def change
create_table :dogs do |t|
t.string :name
t.string :breed
end
end
endWhile the rollback (down) method is not included, it's implicit in the change
method. Rolling back the database would work in exactly the same way as using
the down method.
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