Rake

Rake is a utility for build automation, based on unix utility make. It is a part of the rails command line. Rakefile can be used to set up a suite of automation commands (as in Rails).

Rakefile and .rake files to build lists of tasks.

Writing Rake Tasks

In rails, rails g task generates rake files.

namespace :db do # not required
  desc "some description for task"
  task task_name: [:prerequisite_tasks, :other_tasks_run_before] do
    # Any ruby code
  end
end

Creates a rake task that can be called with $ bin/rake db:task_name

task :task_name, [:arg_1, :arg_2] => [:pre_1, :pre_2] do |t, args|
  # code
end

Creates a rake task called by $ bin/rake task_name[1, 'x'] which passes 1 and x as parameters. (zsh you need to escape square brackets)

In Rails

• rake routes lists all defined routes.
• rake test runs tests
• rake db:migrate, rake db:version, reset, up, down, redo are tasks that automate migration management.

Rakefile

Rakefile describes a set of rake tasks that are available.

task :name
task :name => [:prereq1]
task :name do |t|
    # actions
end

Read More

Rake Task Design

• namespace related tasks
• write descriptions
• avoid puts statements

• use ActiveSupport::Logger.new('log/myRakeTaskName.log'), with log.info as print statement, log.close

  # lib/tasks/migrate/topics.rake
  # should have namespaced tasks in their own rake file, folder per namespace
  namespace :migrate do
  desc 'Migrate topics from legacy database to new database'
  task topics: :environment do
     ...
  end
  end