A generator to create the default expects classes and tables

[jaredlt]

When bootstrapping a new application, it might be nice to have a generator you can optionally run that creates the expected classes (Resource, Booking, Availability), and the migrations for these expected classes.

[sallyhall]

@jaredlt I'm working on this idea! One issue I've bumped into: I want to be able to revoke the generator and have the app be in the state it was in before running it. This would mean that if the expected classes already exist, they still exist after revoking the generator, but if the generator created them, they get removed. My problem is that I don't know how the generator will know whether it created the classes or not when it's being revoked, so if they are removed when revoking, it will remove the expected classes whether they already existed or not.

What would you expect the behavior to be if you ran rails g michel without the expected classes and then rails d michel. Should the created classes be removed?

[jaredlt]

TIL rails d!

I think I would expect rails d to destroy the classes. Given we don't know if they existed already, we can lean on the safety net of git. It follows the same pattern as eg. rails d model Post (which also destroys the file even if you had created it manually).

I was going to suggest that you could always show a warning in the output to explain this scenario although perhaps it's not needed as the destroy output clearly shows what has been deleted.

❯ rails d model Post
      invoke  active_record
      remove    db/migrate/20260330084006_create_posts.rb
      remove    app/models/post.rb
      invoke    test_unit
      remove      test/models/post_test.rb
      remove      test/fixtures/posts.yml