export_to_cloud provides a simple way to export all rows of an ActiveRecord model in Rails to Amazon S3 as a time-stamped CSV file.

gem 'export_to_cloud'

Create an initializer in 'config/initializers' called something like 'export_to_cloud.rb'. Set the following config variables:

ExportToCloud.aws_access_key_id = "your_access_id"
ExportToCloud.aws_secret_access_key = "your_secret_key"
ExportToCloud.s3_bucket = "your_bucket_name"
ExportToCloud.path = "path/to/directory/in/bucket/"

Call the method on any of your models, like so...

Person.export_to_cloud

I usually make this call in a cron job or manually via the console.

That's it!

Add some tests. If anyone has an idea how to pull if off, given the S3 integration, I'm all ears :)