Custom Rake tasks

Writing your own custom Rake task is very simple and almost not worthy of a blog post, but I can't remember everything, so it's here for reference.

In your lib/tasks directory create a file with the extension .rake. i.e. print.rake.

namespace :print do
  task :one do
    attention "One"
  end

  task :two do
    attention "Two"
  end

  task :three do
    attention "Three"
  end

  task :first_user => :environment do
    puts User.find(1).first_name
  end

  task :all => [:one, :two, :three]

  def attention(msg)
    puts "!!!!!!!!!! #{msg}"
  end
end

#Sample Calls

rake print:three
!!!!!!!!!! "Three"

rake print:all
!!!!!!!!!! "One"
!!!!!!!!!! "Two"
!!!!!!!!!! "Three"

• Wrap tasks in the namespace block to namespace your tasks.
• then call by <namespace>:<task_name>
  
• Using => in your task declaration denotes a dependency.
• Use an array for multiple dependencies (i.e. the :all task)
  
• The :environment dependency will load the Rails environment
• :first_user task
  
• You don't need the block if the task is empty.
  
• the print:all task - no do..end defined
• You can define standard methods for code reuse.
• the attention method