[SOLVED] How to convert array of ActiveRecord models to CSV?

How to convert array of ActiveRecord models to CSV?

I got an array of ActiveRecord models that I wish to convert to a CSV. I tried researching gems like FasterCSV, but they just seem to work with strings and arrays, not ActiveRecord models.

In short, I want to convert:

user1 = User.first
user2 = User.last
a = [user1, user2]

TO:

   id,username,bio,email
    1,user1,user 1 bio,user1 email
    1,user2,user 2 bio,user2 email

Is there an easy Rails way to do this?

Solution

The following will write the attributes of all users to a file:

CSV.open("path/to/file.csv", "wb") do |csv|
  csv << User.attribute_names
  User.find_each do |user|
    csv << user.attributes.values
  end
end

Similarly you could create a CSV string:

csv_string = CSV.generate do |csv|
  csv << User.attribute_names
  User.find_each do |user|
    csv << user.attributes.values
  end
end