Check if Ruby On Rails Database Exists Using Rake

cpcwood | Last updated: March 14^th, 2021

namespace :db do
  desc "Checks to see if the database exists"
  task :exists do
    begin
      Rake::Task['environment'].invoke
      ActiveRecord::Base.connection
    rescue
      exit 1
    else
      exit 0
    end
  end
end

Rake task which uses ActiveRecord to check if Ruby on Rails database exists.

Can be useful for performing database creations conditionally on docker container creation.

Usage

Add snippet to Ruby on Rails project lib/tasks/db_exists.rake and ensure the Rakefile is loading the Rails project environment.

Run using bundle exec rake db:exists