save BLOBs to files

gistfile1.rb

# Recently I was involved in rebuilding a client’s site that had previously used
# some old CMS system (in Java, source code not to be found) of our company’s,
# with our new one (in Ruby On Rails). I needed to reuse some of the original
# images.  Turns out the old system kept images and various other files used on the
# site in the MySQL database, as BLOB objects. I came up with this quickie little
# script to pull the files out of the database and save then as good old fashioned
# files.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'rubygems'
require 'mysql'
require 'fileutils'
include FileUtils
mkdir ('files')
db = Mysql.new('server', 'user', 'password', 'database')
db.query("select * from table_with_blobs_in_it") do |res|
  res.each_hash do |rec|
    File.open("files/#{rec['filename_column']}", 'w') do |f|
      f.write(rec['blob_column'])
    end
  end
end