Best way: restore a db on a site using an client CSV file

I’m using rails 3.1.1 and ruby 1.9.2+ so CSV is now fasterCSV

I’m also a newb to rails/ruby/web dev…

I have written a site and added functionality to download csv files
from a small database that the site is managing. this is an effort to
add some db backup and restore functionality as i’m not sure i like
the way i’ve figured to do it with heroku using db:push and db:pull…
I could be WAY off on all of this but as i said above: I’m new to all
of it. Just want some security that i can restore the db if i need
to.

i figured out how to download the data (it’s a small db: 3 tables.
largest has 1300 records, smallest has about 20 and doesn’t grow much

  • just the contents change from user interactions). the site is a
    schedule management tool for a volunteer organization that i’m using
    to learn ruby/rails on as a volunteer exercise… win/win

what is the best way to reset the db from my 3 csv files? Currently I
download them and then on my client i cna run a rake method to reset
the db and then load the downloaded files… then i can push the files
up to heroku (where it’s hosted) with “heroku db:push”. this works ok
but it seems kludgy.

my other option would be to do a pull from heroku but then i can’t
mess with the data locally in development and that doesn’t work for me
at all.

i was thinking that i’d like to have the user set the 3 source files
from a form (I have this code in place) and the n have the submit
perform the database reset and then import… there are some
challenges with this:

besided the fact that i don’t know how to do it to begin with: I"d
like to be able to do some validation on the files before the reset /
import… makes me think i have to upload the files, review them, then
(if all is well) preform my reset and then import) does that make
sense?

I’ve read a tiny bit about paperclip - and some other gems like
it… ???
I’ve tried using the CSV library
I’ve tried doing a file upload.

wasn’t able to make any of them work (didn’t try paperclip, just read
up on it)… some problems were due to the articles i was reading were
written before the CSV library changed etc… some just due to lack of
experience.

any ideas or help would be appreciated!

thanks,

max