It can be very useful to have the database table schema information available to you when you are working on a model in a Ruby on Rails application. There is a plugin available which provides the schema information in comments at the top of each model called Annotate Models Plugin.
# == Schema Information
# Schema version: 20090215021706
#
# Table name: orders
#
# id :integer(11) not null, primary key
# order_number :integer(11) default(0), not null
# created_on :datetime
# shipped_on :datetime
# order_user_id :integer(11)
# order_status_code_id :integer(11) default(1), not null
# notes :text
# referer :string(255)
# order_shipping_type_id :integer(11) default(1), not null
# product_cost :float default(0.0)
# shipping_cost :float default(0.0)
# tax :float default(0.0), not null
# auth_transaction_id :string(255)
# promotion_id :integer(11) default(0), not null
# shipping_address_id :integer(11) default(0), not null
# billing_address_id :integer(11) default(0), not null
# order_account_id :integer(11) default(0), not null
# subscription_id :integer(11)
You can install the plugin using the following command from the root of your Rails application.
script/plugin install http://repo.pragprog.com/svn/Public/plugins/annotate_models
After you are done installing the plugin, simply run the rake task by using this command:
rake annotate_models