I just discovered this handy little gem called annotate. Run it and it’ll insert a comment in all of your model files at once, outlining the schema. This is incredibly convenient when working with your Rails models to be able to see the data and types right there in the top of the file.

Here’s what my Noober (/app/models/noober.rb) model looks like by default:

class Noober < ActiveRecord::Base
end

Spartan as always. Let's give ourselves something to look at with the annotate command. First, include annotate in your Rails 3 project in the Gemfile:

group :development do
  ...
  gem 'annotate'
end

Run the install command to update your gems:

$ bundle install

Run it from within your project directory:

$ bundle exec annotate --position before
Annotated (1): Noober

And the result should look something like this in your models:

# == Schema Information
#
# Table name: noobers
#
#  id         :integer         not null, primary key
#  firstname  :string(255)
#  lastname   :string(255)
#  email      :string(255)
#  nooblevel  :integer
#  created_at :datetime
#  updated_at :datetime
#

class Noober < ActiveRecord::Base
end

Awesome! Now I can see quickly which parts of the model I need to work with and add my code without having to peek at the database:

# == Schema Information
#
# Table name: noobers
#
#  id         :integer         not null, primary key
#  firstname  :string(255)
#  lastname   :string(255)
#  email      :string(255)
#  nooblevel  :integer
#  created_at :datetime
#  updated_at :datetime
#

class Noober < ActiveRecord::Base
    attr_accessible :firstname, :lastname, :email
    validates :firstname,  :presence => true
    validates :lastname, :presence => true
    validates :email, :presence => true
end

Works well for me!