# Importing database from legacy aplication

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/importing-database-from-legacy-aplication/104883>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [May 23, 2007, 3:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/importing-database-from-legacy-aplication/104883 "2007-05-23T15:46:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![seertaak](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@seertaak](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/seertaak)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2007, 3:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/importing-database-from-legacy-aplication/104883/1 "2007-05-23T15:46:21Z")

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Hi.

I’m rebuilding from scratch a legacy application from php/mysql to  
rails/mysql.

At some point I’m going to have to import the data from the legacy  
application. One of the reasons for rebuilding is the badly implemented  
database.  
Also I will have to map the old column names with the new ones and  
convert the encoding from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8.

Should I use migrations or a standalone script for that?  
Where should I implement the tests?

Thanks in advance

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![seertaak](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@seertaak](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/seertaak)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 5:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/importing-database-from-legacy-aplication/104883/2 "2007-05-24T17:59:47Z")

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Sorry

I have tried to find posts relating this question but I didn’t really  
tried the title of this post 😛

There is some info out there