Add Alphabetize Schema Columns To Keep Them Consistent as a Rails TIL

rails/alphabetize-schema-columns-to-keep-them-consistent.md

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+# Alphabetize Schema Columns To Keep Them Consistent
+
+When working on a Rails project with a team, there can be lots of unnecessary
+churn in the `db/schema.rb` file. While there are a couple things that can
+cause this churn, the main one is reordering of columns during local migration.
+
+The [`strong_migrations` gem](https://github.com/ankane/strong_migrations)
+provides [a handy rake task to apply alphabetical ordering to columns
+names](https://github.com/ankane/strong_migrations#schema-sanity). This keeps
+them in a consistent order which reduces churn.
+
+Assuming you have the `strong_migrations` gem included in your app, add the
+following line to the end of your `Rakefile`.
+
+```ruby
+task "db:schema:dump": "strong_migrations:alphabetize_columns"
+```
+
+This sets `strong_migrations:alphabetize_columns` as a prerequisite task to
+`db:schema:dump`. Whenever `db:schema:dump` gets run, the alphabetization task
+will get run first. This ensures the resulting `db/schema.rb` file always has
+column names in a consistent order.
+
+The origin of this idea is Paul Gross's blog post [Alphabetize schema.rb
+Columns](https://www.pgrs.net/2008/03/12/alphabetize-schema-rb-columns/).