How do you write a migration to rename an ActiveRecord model and its table in Rails?

Question

I\'m terrible at naming and realize that there are a better set of names for my models in my Rails app.
Is there any way to use a migration to rename a model and its cor

Answer 1

You also need to replace your indexes:

class RenameOldTableToNewTable< ActiveRecord:Migration
  def self.up
    remove_index :old_table_name, :column_name
    rename_table :old_table_name, :new_table_name
    add_index :new_table_name, :column_name
  end 

  def self.down
    remove_index :new_table_name, :column_name
    rename_table :new_table_name, :old_table_name
    add_index :old_table_name, :column_name
  end
end

And rename your files etc, manually as other answers here describe.

See: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Migration.html

Make sure you can rollback and roll forward after you write this migration. It can get tricky if you get something wrong and get stuck with a migration that tries to effect something that no longer exists. Best trash the whole database and start again if you can't roll back. So be aware you might need to back something up.

Also: check schema_db for any relevant column names in other tables defined by a has_ or belongs_to or something. You'll probably need to edit those too.

And finally, doing this without a regression test suite would be nuts.