checking_and_setting_rails_environment

🔧 Checking and Setting the Rails Environment

Knowing which environment your app is running in helps you debug and configure features correctly. You can inspect Rails.env in code or the Rails console, and you can change it by exporting RAILS_ENV before commands. This is especially useful for running migrations or tests under a specific environment.

# In Rails console, check current environment
echo Rails.env  # => "development"

# Run migrations in test environment
environment RAILS_ENV=test do
  bin/rails db:migrate
end

By explicitly setting the environment, you avoid accidentally modifying your development or production databases when running tasks.