How do I run Ruby tasks that use my Rails models?

Question

I have a Rails app with some basic models. The website displays data retrieved from other sources. So I need to write a Ruby script that creates new instances in my database. I

Answer 1

Check out my answer in "A cron job for rails: best practices?".

It contains two examples for using cron to run Rake tasks and class methods (via script/runner). In both cases, Rails is loaded and you can use your models.