How to get files .gitignore'd on heroku?
heroku, ruby-on-rails
Solution
Heroku stores config variables to the ENV environment
heroku config will display these list of variables
heroku config:get DATABASE_URL --app YOUR_APP
Will return the database url that Heroku as assigned to your app, using this string one can deduce the parameters necessary to connect to your heroku applications database, it follows this format
username:password@database_ip:port/database_name
This should provide you with all the values you'll need for the heroku side database.yml, its a file that is created for you each time you deploy and there is nothing it that can't be gotten from the above URL.
gitignoring the database.yml file is good practice
Problem
We have inherited a Rails project hosted on Heroku. The problem is that I don't understand how to get a copy of the database.yml or other various config files that have been ignored in the .gitignore file. Sure I can look through the history but it seems like a hip shot when comparing it to what should be on the production server. Right now we are having to make changes to the staging environment which makes things a bit arduous and less efficient than having a local dev environment so we can really get under the hood. Obviously, having an exact copy of the config is a good place to start. With other hosts it's easy to get access to all the files on the server using good ol' ftp. This might be more easily addressed with some sort of git procedure that I am less familiar with.