How to use ActiveRecord outside Rails?
Install it like any other gem
gem install activerecordThen you configure it somewhere like this
ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection( :adapter => 'mysql', :database => 'database', :username => 'user', :password => 'password', :host => 'localhost')Models can then inherit as normal from ActiveRecord::Base
You get all of the rake tasks but you do have to do some extra configuration since you will not have the Rails. Here is the link inside of activerecord for how to configure that stuff.
An updated solution is the standalone_migrations. Basically after doing the configuration for the gem and creating the configuration, you have access to all the ActiveRecord niceties. Rake tasks included!
Also, I made a small generator for scaffolding simple scripts that have access to ActiveRecord out of the box: nrb - Ninja Ruby.