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.

Ravikanth Andhavarapu assesses whether an organization's data can prove what it actually did. What that involves · ravi@helloravi.com