Best way to export a database table to a YAML file?

Question

I have some data in my development database that I would like to utilize as fixtures in my test environment. What is the best way in Rails 2.x to export a database table to

Answer 1

For Rails 3, if you want to dump yaml from the DB and use it as a fixture, I use this code:

module DbToFixture

  TEMP_FIXTURE_PATH = Rails.root.join("test", "new_fixtures")

  def fixturize(model)
    Dir.mkdir(TEMP_FIXTURE_PATH) unless File.exists?(TEMP_FIXTURE_PATH)
    fname = model.table_name
    file_path = TEMP_FIXTURE_PATH.join(fname)
    File.open(file_path, 'w') do |f|
      model.all.each do |m|
        f.write(m.to_yaml)
      end
    end
  end

end

I just run it from the console with

require './lib/db_to_fixture'
include DbToFixture
fixturize ModelName

I have not been able to get ar_fixtures to work with Rails 3 (haven't tried very hard though). Yaml db is great for dumping and saving the db, but its format is not compatible with fixtures.