+++
date = "2011-04-04"
title = "Rake with namespaces and default tasks"
tags = ["Ruby", "rake"]
slug = "rake-with-namespaces-and-default-tasks"
+++
Rake is an awesome tool to automate tasks for your Ruby (or Rails)
application. In this short article I'll show you how to use namespaces
and set default tasks for them.
~
Let me first tell you what I want to accomplish. I have a Rails
application that needs to be cleaned up occasionally. Essetially we
delete old data from the database.

There are several models that each implement a `cleanup!` method which
takes care of cleaning up data. Now all I need is a few rake tasks to
kick off the clean up process.

This is what I'd like:

``` shell
rake cleanup         # Cleanup everything
rake cleanup:clicks  # Aggregate click stats
rake cleanup:logs    # Clean old logs
```

Here's what I put in `lib/tasks/cleanup.rake`:

``` ruby
namespace :cleanup do
  desc "Aggregate click stats"
  task :clicks => :environment do
    Click.cleanup!
  end

  desc "Clean old logs"
  task :logs => :environment do
    Log.cleanup!
  end

  task :all => [:clicks, :logs]
end

desc "Cleanup everything"
task :cleanup => 'cleanup:all'
```

Notice that the `cleanup:all` task does not have a description. Without
it, it won't show up when you do a `rake -T` to view available tasks.

The task `cleanup` has the same name as the namespace and calls the
(undocumentend) `cleanup:all` task, kicking off the entire cleanup
process.