DEV Community

Cover image for Top 10 Rails Commands We Must Know
Shaher Shamroukh
Shaher Shamroukh

Posted on • Updated on

Top 10 Rails Commands We Must Know

Rails Commands are very helpful and important to develop the application faster & easier and there are some great commands in Rails without whose commands we can’t even develop the application.
In this guide we are going to explore some of the best & must known Rails commands which will definitely help every Ruby on Rails developer out there.
So without further ado let's get started.

1- Creating a new application

rails new app-name this command will create a new app.

rails new app-name -d postgresql specify postgresql as the database of the app.

rails new app-name –api creates only API application.

2- Running rails server

rails s which is short for rails server will run the server and open http://localhost:3000

3- Rails Generator commands

Now the following commands will help you to create assets, controllers,models, migrations, helpers, jobs, mailers, test files, scaffold, tasks.
so we are going to mention here the most important ones and to see the full list of commands run rails generate -h, and a handy tip here is to use the command rails g model | more
This command will print the details of how to use the generator on the model or controller or task etc.

Scaffold Generator

- rails g scaffold book name price:decimal

Model Generator

- rails g model ModelName column_name:datatype column_name2:datatype2

Controller Generator

- rails g controller ControllerName action1 action2

Migration Generator for adding columns

- rails g migration add_name_of_column_to_table_name name_of_column:datatype

Migration Generator for Removing columns

- rails g migration remove_column_name_from_table_name name_of_column:datatype
Remember to run rails db:migrate after all of these commands

Here is a more in-depth discussion of what files each of these generators create, and when they are the most useful.

4- Opening Rails console

rails console or rails c

The command let us interact with the application from the command line.
the rails console uses IRB.
This is very useful for testing out quick ideas with code and changing data server-side without touching the website.

5- Rails destroy command

rails destroy or rails d command is the opposite of generate.
It'll figure out what generate did, and undo it.
for example this command rails g model ModelName will generate the model and to destroy this model all we do is rails d model ModelName

6- Rails about command

rails about command will give us all the information we need about the current application as Ruby, RubyGems, Rails, the subcomponents, application's folder, the current environment name, Middleware, app's database adapter, and schema version.

7- Rails db commands

rails db we use this command to create, reset, drop, run the migration and more, checkout the migrations guide Here

8- Displaying all Rails routes

rails routes command will list all of your defined routes in a nicely organized way, and that is really useful for tracking down routing problems in the application, or giving you a good overview of the URLs in an app you're trying to get familiar with.

9- Running Rails test

As we know Rails comes with a test framework called minitest. The rails test will run the different tests in the app.

10- bundle update

bundle update command will update all of your Gems to match the Gemfile, If you modify the Gemfile in a project in order to include new or different Ruby Gems.

Resources

The Rails Command Line Guide

Also Here is a Cheat-sheet for Singular or Plural? in Ruby on Rails.

Summary

You’ve learned about the most useful command in rails so you can quickly jumpstart a new Rails application to practice with.

Also with practice those commands will be second to nature for you.

Thanks for reading!

Top comments (1)

Collapse
 
shahershamroukh profile image
Shaher Shamroukh

yep that's a handy one too, Thank you