stuff_arc - supports Rails portable data dump and restore

Tested on Rails 3.0, 3.1 & 3.2

stuff_arc adds class level archiving and unarchiving of an ActiveRecord object a Rails app by Auto-Extending ActiveRecord::Base with two methods: archive and unarchive

Archives are JSON data, one line per model instance with the 'id' value omitted so that the data can be restored w/o worrying about primary key clashes.

Restoration is performed by instantiating the model and then calling save!. save! exceptions are trapped and generate simple error messages, thus Rails validations can be used to avoid data duplication and data clobbering.

These methods are designed to be used in a Rails Console, not programatically.

Add `gem stuff_arc` to your Gemfile & run `bundle`

All models (derived from ActiveRecord::Base) will now have `archive` and `unarchive`
class methods.

Assume:

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base

• Foo.archive(options = {}) - which will create the file 'foos.json' containing JSON serializations of every record retrieved by Foo.all with the 'id' entry is excluded.
• Foo.unarchive(options = {}) - which reads the file 'foos.json', decodes each record and attempts to save! them to the database.

The options are:

• :fname - name of archive file. Defaults to the underscored, pluralized version of the class name with the '.json' suffix.

• :lib_dir - path to directory archives are placed/looked for in. NOTE: :lib_dir is ignored if :fname is an absolute path. Defaults to:

  <app root>/lib/stuff\_arc - if Rails.public\_path is defined
    
  '.' - if Rails.public\_path is not defined
  

This creates a portable dump and restore facility for each model in which StuffArc is included.

Fire up the rails console [rails c <development|production>] and . . .

Create an archive in the default directory with default name:

Foo.archive

Create an archive in the default directory with a different name

Foo.archive :fname => 'foobar'

Create an archive in a specified directory with the default name

Foo.archive :lib_dir => '/tmp'

Fire up the rails console [rails c <development|production>] and . . .

repeat one of the commands above using Foo.unarchive instead of Foo.archive