backup_db.rake

require 'yaml'

desc "Copy the remote production database to the local development box" 
task :backup do
  filename = "#{application}.dump.#{Time.now.to_i}.sql.bz2" 
  file = "/tmp/#{filename}" 
  on_rollback { delete file }
  db = YAML::load(ERB.new(IO.read(File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), 'database.yml'))).result)['production']
  run "mysqldump -u #{db['username']} --password=#{db['password']} #{db['database']} | bzip2 -c > #{file}"  do |ch, stream, out|
    puts out
  end
  `mkdir -p #{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/../backups/`
  get file, "backups/#{filename}" 
  run "rm #{file}" 
end

desc "Copy the latest backup to the local development database" 
task :import_backup do
  filename = `ls -tr backups | tail -n 1`.chomp
  if filename.empty?
    logger.important "No backups found" 
  else
    ddb = YAML::load(ERB.new(IO.read(File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), 'database.yml'))).result)['development']
    logger.debug "Loading backups/#{filename} into local development database" 
    `bzip2 -cd backups/#{filename} | mysql -u #{ddb['username']} --password=#{ddb['password']} #{ddb['database']}`
    logger.debug "command finished" 
  end
end

desc "Backup the remote production database and import it to the local development database" 
task :backup_and_import do
  backup
  import_backup
end

log output

### where would I pass in the environment variables to let rake to it's thing here?

rake aborted!
undefined local variable or method `application' for main:Object