Rails: Up and Running, 2nd Edition

Generating Models

When you generated a scaffold, Rails created a model for you. You can use the script/generate command to create models without building the whole resource. As always, you can let the script/generate command tell you the basics:

$ script/generate model Usage: script/generate model ModelName [field:type, field:type] Options: --skip-timestamps Don't add timestamps to the migration file for this model --skip-migration Don't generate a migration file for this model --skip-fixture Don't generation a fixture file for this model Rails Info: -v, --version Show the Rails version number and quit. -h, --help Show this help message and quit. General Options: -p, --pretend Run but do not make any changes. -f, --force Overwrite files that already exist. -s, --skip Skip files that already exist. -q, --quiet Suppress normal output. -t, --backtrace Debugging: show backtrace on errors. -c, --svn Modify files with subversion. (Note: svn must be in path) -g, --git Modify files with git. (Note: git must be in path) Description: Stubs out a new model. Pass the model name, either CamelCased or under_scored, and an optional list of attribute pairs as arguments. Attribute pairs are column_name:sql_type arguments specifying the model's attributes. Timestamps are added by default, so you don't have to specify them by hand as 'created_at:datetime updated_at:datetime'. You don't have to think up every attribute up front, but it helps to sketch out a few so you can start working with the model ...