How to back up your rails development database

Problem

When I build features I end up wanting a certain data-state of database which is very useful for me to play around. As I play around with features the database state changes and I would want to get back to a specific data-state. I encounter this too often.

Solution

One of the solutions is to setup seeds.rb file to create a specific data-state in the database.

There is a quick-fix solution which may be very useful.

Given that you are using sqlite3 as the development database, you will find the file development.sqlite3 in the RAILS_ROOT/db/ folder. Copy this file to a safe place when you want to back up a specific data-state in rails. Repeat the same with /public/ folder. You have to do a recursive copy (use cp -R). If you have any files they will be stored in this.

Play around with the application and when you want to restore the application to the previous data-state replace the existing RAILS_ROOT/db/development.sqlite3 with the development.sqlite3 you backedup. Do the same with \public\ folder.`

You have reload! your rails console and restart your rails server for the backedup database to come into effect.