How to create postgres database for Rails app manually?

Question

How can I create postgres db for Rails app properly but in psql, not via rake db:create?

I mean, one can always write CREATE DATABASE project_name, but I don't know what happens in that rake task under the hood. Maybe there are a lot of additional params.

Update

After first answer I decided to clarify: I know how to write and use migrations, they are awesome, but my question not about them. It's about rake db:create task and pg adapter.

In other words, I just want to know which command in psql is equal to rake db:create.

Answer 1

If you select the db on pgadmin III it will show you the sql instructions with the local things to load. They are very importanst if you have full text index on. You must run them from the database postgres.

Answer 2

Rails expects table names to match model names but be plural and snake_case. For example, a User model will store records in a users table and a BlogEntry model will store records in a blog_entries table.

Rails expects a table's primary key to be named id and it expects foreign keys to match model names but be snake_case and end with _id. For example, if BlogEntry belongs_to User, Rails will expect the blog_entries table to have a user_id column.

Join tables (such as used with many-to-many relations) are expected to be named with the two models' names in plural snake case and alphabetical order. For example, a join table describing a many-to-many relation between a User model and a Blog model would be expected to have the name blogs_users and have, at the least, the columns blog_id and user_id.

Those are the basics. Of course, all of this is configurable: For example, you can use the table_name class method to tell a model to use a table with a different name, and the relation methods (belongs_to, has_many, etc.) all take options letting you specify different names.

Apart from these naming conventions Rails doesn't require anything special from a database, as long as the correct credentials and configuration are specified in config/database.yml.