There are a bunch of ways to roll back migrations, so I figured I’d capture them in Q & A format.

Let’s say the following migration files exist:

> ls db/migrate

20160613172644_migration_1
20160614173819_migration_2
20160615142814_migration_3
20160615160123_migration_4
20160615174549_migration_5

Q: How do I roll back the last migration.
A: rake db:rollback

Q: How do I roll back the last 3 migrations?
A: rake db:rollback STEP=3

Q: How do I roll back a specific migration?
A: rake db:migrate:down VERSION=20160615142814
Details:
The timestamp comes from the filename: 20160615142814_migration_3

and… the one I learned today:

Q: How do I roll back all the migration past a certain version?
A: rake db:migrate VERSION=20160615142814.
Details:
The above will keep the following:

20160613172644_migration_1
20160614173819_migration_2
20160615142814_migration_3

and roll back the following:

20160615160123_migration_4
20160615174549_migration_5

In other words, it will keep all the migrations upto and including the version you specified.