Grasp Ruby on Rails

script/generate migration add_type_to_users

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class AddTypeToUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    add_column :users, :type, :type, :null => :no?, :default => :maybe?
  end

  def self.down
    remove_column :users, :type
  end
end

Am I being n00b, or is this a new feature in edge rails? Does this work for columns not reserved for rails?

UPDATE:

On further inspection, this is a new thing in edge rails and it does work for other columns. While running the following:

script/generate migration add_name_to_users

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class AddNameToUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    add_column :users, :name, :type, :null => :no?, :default => :maybe?
  end

  def self.down
    remove_column :users, :name
  end
end

script/generate migration add_name_string_to_users

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class AddNameStringToUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    add_column :users, :name_string, :type, :null => :no?, :default => :maybe?
  end

  def self.down
    remove_column :users, :name_string
  end
end

script/generate migration add_name_and_date_to_users

class AddNameAndDateToUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    add_column :users, :name_and_date, :type, :null => :no?, :default => :maybe?
  end

  def self.down
    remove_column :users, :name_and_date
  end
end

It seems that the implementation is pretty primitive. Obviously I'm using a bad approach as I should be looking at the source to see if any additional implementation does exist without my knowing, but I was hoping that the most intuitive thing for me would implemented already. I think it would be cool to see this syntactic sugar get more advanced. Comments? Opinions?

NOTE: The code that is generated by the migration does not work automatically. You have to change the stubbed symbols placed inside the migration to whatever you need. It's more of a guide than a performance enhancer (which IMO think that it should be both).

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def self.up
  @first_query = true
  sql_file = File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../some_crazy_file.sql"
    
  IO.readlines(sql_file).join.split(/;\nINSERT INTO /).each do |q|
    q = "INSERT INTO " + q unless @first_query
    execute q
    @first_query = false
  end
end

UPDATE: My friend Brandon, who chose not to comment on this blog post (shame on him!) said that running the sql file in command line could work as a more elegant solution there. The only problem I have with this approach is whether or not the rake task fails if the operation fails. So you code would like like this:

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def self.up
  result = `mysql db_name < some_crazy_file.sql`
end

The only thing left is to make sure that result returns a favorable result, and if it doesn't then fail the migration. I'm not exactly sure how to do this (to busy to investigate). Any takers?