How To Export A MySQL Database to JSON, CSV and XML with Ruby and the ActiveRecord Gem

It's trivial to export data from a mysql database with Ruby and ActiveRecord. All you have to do is establish a connection and define a class that represents the table. require 'rubygems' require 'active_record' ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection( :adapter => "mysql", :database => "WSD", :username => "root", :password => "", :host => "localhost" ) class Event < ActiveRecord::Base; end class Person < ActiveRecord::Base; end File.open("export-events.json", "w") { |f| f.write Event.all.to_json } File.open("export-people.json", "w") { |f| f.write Person.all.to_json } You can also use Bundler and a Gemfile to install dependencies. It might look something like this source 'https://rubygems.org' gem "activerecord" gem "mysql You can install the dependencies by cding into the directory with the Gemfile and execute bundle install Bundler is a RubyGem so you will have to have it installed first. gem install bundler There is also a cool Gem callsed mysql2xxxx available at https://github.com/seamusabshere/mysql2xxxx The Gem will let you run arbitrary sql statements and export them in either CSV, JSON or XML. Here are some ways to use mysql2xxxx mysql2csv --user=dbuser --password=dbpassword --database=dbname --execute="select * from automobile_makes" mysql2json --user=dbuser --password=dbpassword --database=dbname --execute="select * from automobile_makes" mysql2xml --user=dbuser --password=dbpassword --database=dbname --execute="select * from automobile_makes" And to install gem install mysql2xxxx