how to get rake task to delete dependents

rubyonrails-talk
1

is there a way i can get a rake task to destroy the dependents declared in the model when an item is destroyed?

here is my rake task code:

task(:deleteFakes => :environment) do    @items = Item.find(:all, :conditions => 'items.fake = true', :order => 'name')

   @items.each do |item|      item.destroy      puts item.name + " destroyed!"    end end

and part of the item model:

  has_many :compounds, :dependent => :destroy

if i delete the items through the web interface the item and it's associated compounds are removed. is there a way i can get this to work from the rake task?

thanks. scott