How to change a Ruby on Rails application name?

I have a Ruby on Rails application that was created using:

rails new old_name -d mysql

Now I want to change the application name to be new_name.

Just changing the application folder name will not be enough, because the database name, for example, also has to be changed (from old_name_development to new_name_development). I wonder if there are other places in the automatically generated files that needs changing.

Is there any built in command for changing the application name ?

In Rails 3, there are references to the application name in the following files:

• config/application.rb
• config/environment.rb
• config/environments/development.rb
• config/environments/production.rb
• config/environments/test.rb
• config/initializers/secret_token.rb
• config/initializers/session_store.rb
• config/mongoid.yml (if using Mongoid)
• config/routes.rb
• config.ru
• Rakefile
• app/views/layouts/application.html.erb, in title tag

There's a Rails plugin to do it for you. Super convenient.

https://github.com/get/rename

in Rails 3, the application class is defined in config/application.rb, and referred to in your environment files (config/environment.rb, config/environments/*.rb) and config/routes.rb. I think that's it, but you should find out pretty quickly from rails server if you missed one. :)

• config/application.rb
• config/enviroment.rb
• config/environments/*.rb
• config/routes.rb

That said, unless you've got a very specific reason for wanting it changed, I wouldn't bother. Doesn't really affect the application in any other way.

Rails 3 application can rename using https://github.com/morshedalam/rename

Run the following to replace the old_name for new_name from the root of your Rails (3.0.7) project.

replace old_name new_name -- ./config/environment.rb ./config/application.rb ./Rakefile ./config/initializers/secret_token.rb ./config/environments/production.rb ./config/environments/development.rb ./app/views/layouts/application.html.erb ./config/routes.rb config.ru ./config/environments/test.rb ./config/initializers/session_store.rb

But be sure to run

fgrep old_name . -iR

Or something similar first to check if there are no occurrences of old_name in your project who not should be replaced.

EDIT:

Of course for this you need to have the replace command installed.

And take in account that your appname will be CamelCased, so maybe you have to try a few different variations, like OldName vs. NewName.

On rails 4

Add

gem 'rename'

to Gemfile then do

bundle install

After bundle install

rails g rename:app_to name_of_app

You might find yourself having to rename the app when wanting or having to generate a model or scaffold with the same name as the app's name. Just happened to me. Used https://github.com/morshedalam/rename on Rails 3.2.13 and no problems so far.

To do this, I have used good old shell commands :

grep -r old_name * | cut -d: -f1 | xargs sed -i .bak 's/old_name/new_name/g'

This command replace the old_name with new_name in all file it finds the old_name. However, it creates a backup file with the extension '.bak'. Those file can be easily removed once you check everything went well.

The advantage of this, is that it is not 'rails version dependent'.