Acessing a database stand alone using active record

Question

Is it possible to obtain details about a schema and get the table objects using a stand alone active record connection. I am trying to do something like this

require'rubygems'
gem 'activerecord'
require 'activerecord'
ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(
  :adapter  => "mysql",
  :host     => "localhost",
  :username => "root",
  :database => "test_database"
)

Is it possible to access the tables of the db using this connection object.

Answer 1

Yes, it is perfectly possible to use ActiveRecord without Rails.

You can also use standalone_migrations gem to manage ActiveRecord environment outside of Rails: https://github.com/thuss/standalone-migrations .

Answer 2

Have you try to load all Active Support?

In order to have a near-zero default footprint, Active Support does not load anything by default. It is broken in small pieces so that you can load just what you need

require 'active_support/all' 

Active Support Core Extensions