How to Make Rake Tasks Run Under My Sinantra App/Environment

How do I make Rake tasks run under my Sinantra app/environment?

I've set up a Rakefile for Sinatra using a kind of Rails-like environment:

task :environment do
  require File.expand_path(File.join(*%w[ config environment ]), File.dirname(__FILE__))
end

You then have something in config/environment.rb that contains what you need to start up your app properly. It might be something like:

require "rubygems"
require "bundler"
Bundler.setup

require 'sinatra'

Putting this set-up in a separate file avoids cluttering your Rakefile and can be used to launch your Sinatra app through config.ru if you use that:

require File.expand_path(File.join(*%w[ config environment ]), File.dirname(__FILE__))

run Sinatra::Application

Rake task identifying the environment as development ruby and sinatra

Your application should honour the RACK_ENV environment variable.

Try issuing the following command:

user@server $ RACK_ENV=production rake prune_users:older_than_2months

and verify whether it connects to the production database. If it does, you need to change whatever invokes your scheduled jobs to also include the RACK_ENV environment variable

Rake tasks won't run inside of my sinatra app

get '/' do
    system 'rake test'
end

Rails-style Rake Tasks for Sinatra (Ruby)

Why Sinatra Doesn't Do What You Want "Out of the Box"

Sinatra isn't a multi-layer framework in the same way as Ruby on Rails. Specifically, while you can certainly add a database layer to a Sinatra application, it doesn't support ActiveRecord or Rails migrations "out of the box."

If you're looking for standard Rails rake tasks and migration support, why not just use Rails? Sinatra is terrific, but it is not a drop-in replacement for Rails.

So You Want Database-Centric Rake Tasks...

If your database connectivity comes from a gem, see if the gem's project has a Rakefile you can re-purpose for your application. For example, the sinatra-activerecord gem provides instructions for adding related Rake tasks to your Rakefile.

If you rolled your own database connectivity, then you're probably going to have to roll your own Rake tasks as well. The documentation for Rake is extensive, and the features should allow you to automate the tasks you need.

How do I get a custom Rake task to run in Sinatra?

Create a Rakefile at your Sinatra app's top directory, require the file that contains this task you want to use and you should be good to go.

Edit:

A simple solution is changing your Rakefile to:

require "./app"
require "sinatra/activerecord/rake"
Dir.glob('lib/tasks/*.rake').each { |r| load r}

Now any .rake file under lib/tasks will be loaded.

Accessing Sinatra application scope from Rake task

I ended up storing the variable using Memcache. This plays well with Heroku since they provide a free add-on for it. The Dalli gem provides a simple interface with Ruby for Memcache. In my Sinatra app file, I set the following options:

require 'dalli'

set :cache, Dalli::Client.new

I then am able to recover the stored variable from the Rakefile:

task :do_something do
    Sinatra::Application.settings.cache.set('var', get_data)
end

I can then access this variable again in my Sinatra controller:

settings.cache.get('var')

How do I import rake tasks from a gem when using Sinatra?

I figured out how to do it after 10+ hours of trying to figure it out and I had to patch Rake in the process. I submitted this patch:
https://github.com/jimweirich/rake/pull/28

I also wrote up a blog entry that contains the patched code:
http://www.justinidea.com/2011/03/proposed-modification-to-rakes-discovery-of-tasks.html

[UPDATE]

I also found another way that doesn't require a rake patch, go figure...all I had to do was create a tasks.rb and require it inside the rakefile, but to make this work I had to make it look like this:

require 'rake'
require 'bundler'
Bundler.setup
require 'orientdb'
require 'orientdb/tasks'

I still think the rake patch is pretty cool though. :)

[UPDATE 2]

In the mean time until the pull request gets accepted by the rake team, I created a gem called alltasks that will load all of the rake tasks that the gems in your Gemfile and their dependencies contain.

https://github.com/ricaurte/alltasks

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