[ruby] How to reverse a 'rails generate'

I want to delete all the files it created and roll back any changes made, but not necessarily to the database, but more to the config files.

I'd like to automatically delete all the resource mappings for the model/controller deleted in the routes.rb file and everywhere else that changes might have been made?

This question is related to ruby ruby-on-rails-3 rails-generate

The answer is


To reverse rails generate, use rails destroy:

rails destroy Model

See "rails destroy" for more information.


We use generate as rails generate app. So regenerating any generate statement can be reversed using destroy statement. Just replace generate with destroy i.e. rails generate app can be written as rails destroy app' rails generate ____asrails destroy ____`


Before reverting the rails generate, please make sure you rollback the migration first.

Case 1: if you want to revert scaffold then run this command:

rails destroy scaffold MODEL_NAME

Case 2: if you want to revert model then run this command:

rails destroy model MODEL_NAME

Case 3: if you want to revert controller then run this command:

rails destroy controller CONTROLLER_NAME

Note: you can also use shortcut d instead of destroy.


It's worth mentioning the -p flag here ("p" for pretend).

If you add this to the command it will simply do a "test" run and show you what files will be deleted without actually deleting them.

$ rails d controller welcome -p

  remove  app/controllers/welcome_controller.rb
  invoke  erb
  remove    app/views/welcome
  invoke  test_unit
  remove    test/controllers/welcome_controller_test.rb
  invoke  helper
  remove    app/helpers/welcome_helper.rb
  invoke    test_unit
  remove      test/helpers/welcome_helper_test.rb
  invoke  assets
  invoke    coffee
  remove      app/assets/javascripts/welcome.js.coffee
  invoke    scss
  remove      app/assets/stylesheets/welcome.css.scss

If you're happy with it, run the command again without the -p flag.


You can undo a rails generate in the following ways:

  • For the model: rails destroy MODEL
  • For the controller: rails destroy controller_name

To reverse that, we just destroy it. Open the Terminal application and go to the project directory, then, type this:

rails destroy model CamelCase
rails destroy controller CamelCase

Where CamelCase is a name of any model or controller. It will remove the model, migration and some of the related test files. (You can see the result in the Terminal window after you have run the command.)


If you prefer to delete the controller manually:

For controller welcome

rm app/controllers/welcome_controller.rb
rm app/views/welcome
rm test/controllers/welcome_controller_test.rb
rm app/helpers/welcome_helper.rb
rm test/helpers/welcome_helper_test.rb
rm app/assets/javascripts/welcome.js.coffee
rm app/assets/stylesheets/welcome.css.scss

rails destroy controller Controller_name was returning a bunch of errors. To be able to destroy controller I had to remove related routes in routes.rb. P.S. I'm using rails 3.1


If you use Rails, use rails d controller Users.

And, if you use Zeus, use zeus d controller Users.

On the other hand, if you are using git or SVN, revert your changes with the commit number. This is much faster.


All versions of rails have a "destroy", so-, if you create a (for example) scaffold named "tasks" using a generator, to destroy all the changes of that generate step you will have to type:

rails destroy scaffold Tasks

Hope it helps you.


Suppose I have created a controller named "sample" like:

rails generate controller sample

If I have to destroy this controller, all I have to do is swap generate with destroy, as in

rails destroy controller sample.

If you want to reverse the generation, all you have to do is swap generate with destroy.


You could use rails d model/controller/migration ... to destroy or remove the changes generated by using the rails generate command.

For example:

rails g model Home name:string

creates a model named home with attribute name. To remove the files and code generated from that command we can use

rails d model Home

Removed scaffolding for selected model:

bin/rails d scaffold <AccessControl> //model name

You can destroy all things that was created same way except little thing change. For controller,

rails d controller_name (d stands for destroy)

For Model

rails d model_name

you just put d(destroy) instead of g(generate) in your migration.


You can revert your

rails g/generate controller/model/migration xxx

output by using:

 rails d/destroy controller/model/migration xxx

This is a prototype to generate or destroy a controller or model in Rails:

rails generate/destroy controller/model [controller/model Name]

For example, if you need to generate a User Controller:

rails generate controller User

or

rails g controller User

If you want to destroy the User controller or revert to above action then use:

rails destroy controller User

or:

rails d controller User

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