How do you write a migration to rename an ActiveRecord model and its table in Rails?

Question

I'm terrible at naming and realize that there are a better set of names for my models in my Rails app.
Is there any way to use a migration to rename a model and its corresponding table?

Answer 1

Here's an example:

class RenameOldTableToNewTable < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    rename_table :old_table_name, :new_table_name
  end

  def self.down
    rename_table :new_table_name, :old_table_name
  end
end

I had to go and rename the model declaration file manually.

Edit:

In Rails 3.1 & 4, ActiveRecord::Migration::CommandRecorder knows how to reverse rename_table migrations, so you can do this:

class RenameOldTableToNewTable < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    rename_table :old_table_name, :new_table_name
  end 
end

(You still have to go through and manually rename your files.)