I'm using rails 3.1.1 and ruby 1.9.2+ so CSV is now fasterCSV
I'm also a newb to rails/ruby/web dev...
I have written a site and added functionality to download csv files from a small database that the site is managing. this is an effort to add some db backup and restore functionality as i'm not sure i like the way i've figured to do it with heroku using db:push and db:pull... I could be WAY off on all of this but as i said above: I'm new to all of it. Just want some security that i can restore the db if i need to.
i figured out how to download the data (it's a small db: 3 tables. largest has 1300 records, smallest has about 20 and doesn't grow much - just the contents change from user interactions). the site is a schedule management tool for a volunteer organization that i'm using to learn ruby/rails on as a volunteer exercise... win/win
what is the best way to reset the db from my 3 csv files? Currently I download them and then on my client i cna run a rake method to reset the db and then load the downloaded files.. then i can push the files up to heroku (where it's hosted) with "heroku db:push". this works ok but it seems kludgy.
my other option would be to do a pull from heroku but then i can't mess with the data locally in development and that doesn't work for me at all.
i was thinking that i'd like to have the user set the 3 source files from a form (I have this code in place) and the n have the submit perform the database reset and then import... there are some challenges with this:
besided the fact that i don't know how to do it to begin with: I"d like to be able to do some validation on the files before the reset / import... makes me think i have to upload the files, review them, then (if all is well) preform my reset and then import) does that make sense?
I've read a tiny bit about paperclip - and some other gems like it.. ??? I've tried using the CSV library I've tried doing a file upload.
wasn't able to make any of them work (didn't try paperclip, just read up on it).. some problems were due to the articles i was reading were written before the CSV library changed etc... some just due to lack of experience.
any ideas or help would be appreciated!
thanks,
max
