Some Quick Tips

Removing a column from a table in SQLite

There’s no straight forward way in SQLite so you need to copy the contents into a new table drop and recreate the table and put the data back in. In short, its a big mess. Thankfully rails manages that for us.
```
     rails generate migration RemoveUserIdFromProjects user_id:integer
     rake db:migrate
```
Creating static data

I needed some static data in my application, specifically project statuses, but I wanted to have an ability to maintain them in the database so we could add/ remove them as needed. The way I did it was through Fixtures. All you need to do is:

a. Inside the db/migrate directory, create a directory called init_data. Create a file called <tablename>.yml inside init_data. Copy the format from model yml inside the test directory of the project. Oh by the way, you would need to have a model for the table, obviously.

b. Create a file called <a number>_load_<table name>.rb inside db/migrate. Adjust the number so that the file appears at the end of the directory listing by name. The following is what I created for my model (called State). I guess you can use it as is - just find and replace State with your model name :-)
```
     require 'active_record/fixtures'
     class LoadStates < ActiveRecord::Migration

     def self.up

     down()
      directory = File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), "init_data")

     Fixtures.create_fixtures(directory, "states")

     end

     def self.down

     State.delete_all

     end

     end
```
Thats it - now run rake db:migrate and it will load all data as defined in the fixture YML.
Adding a URL to an existing controller

e.g. I needed to add a URL /projects/load to call method load() in my projects controller. Add the following in routes.rb before the resource definition:
```
 match 'projects/load' => 'projects#load'
```