Using a Database through an SSH Tunnel in a Rails Environment

If you want to use your local machine to inspect a remote database over SSH, you can add it as an environment in rails to let you run your app locally off of the remote DB (and do rails console):

config/environments/remote.rb:

import 'net/ssh/gateway'
module RemoteConnectionManager
  SSH_USER = 'myuser'

  def self.port_through_tunnel(remote_host, port)
    return Net::SSH:Gateway.new(remote_host, SSH_USER)
      .open(port)
  end
end

database.yml:

production: &prod
  host: 'prod.mysite.com'
  port: 5432
  ...
remote:
  <<: *prod
  host: 127.0.0.1
  port: <%= RemoteConnectionManager.port_through_tunnel('prod.mysite.com', 5432) %>