gistfile1.rb

# Credit to Brandon Keepers
# http://opensoul.org/2007/2/9/automatically-backing-up-your-remote-database-on-deploy
require 'yaml'

desc "Backup the remote production database"
task :backup, :roles => :db, :only => { :primary => true } do
  filename = "#{application}.dump.#{Time.now.to_i}.sql.bz2"
  file = "/tmp/#{filename}"
  env = ENV['RAILS_ENV'] || 'development'
  on_rollback { delete file }
  db = YAML::load(ERB.new(IO.read(File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), 'database.yml'))).result)[env]
  run "pg_dump -u #{db['username']} --password=#{db['password']} #{db['database']} | bzip2 -c > #{file}"  do |ch, stream, data|
    puts data
  end
  `mkdir -p #{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/../backups/`
  get file, "backups/#{filename}"
  delete file
end

desc "Backup the database before running migrations"
task :before_migrate do 
  backup
end