How to pass command line arguments to a rake task

Question

I have a rake task that needs to insert a value into multiple databases.

I\'d like to pass this value into the rake task from the command line, or from another

Answer 1

I've found the answer from these two websites: Net Maniac and Aimred.

You need to have version > 0.8 of rake to use this technique

The normal rake task description is this:

desc 'Task Description'
task :task_name => [:depends_on_taskA, :depends_on_taskB] do
  #interesting things
end

To pass arguments, do three things:

1. Add the argument names after the task name, separated by commas.
2. Put the dependencies at the end using :needs => [...]
3. Place |t, args| after the do. (t is the object for this task)

To access the arguments in the script, use args.arg_name

desc 'Takes arguments task'
task :task_name, :display_value, :display_times, :needs => [:depends_on_taskA, :depends_on_taskB] do |t, args|
  args.display_times.to_i.times do
    puts args.display_value
  end
end

To call this task from the command line, pass it the arguments in []s

rake task_name['Hello',4]

will output

Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello

and if you want to call this task from another task, and pass it arguments, use invoke

task :caller do
  puts 'In Caller'
  Rake::Task[:task_name].invoke('hi',2)
end

then the command

rake caller

will output

In Caller
hi
hi

I haven't found a way to pass arguments as part of a dependency, as the following code breaks:

task :caller => :task_name['hi',2]' do
   puts 'In Caller'
end