What is the best way to seed a database in Rails

Question

I have a rake task that populates some initial data in my rails app   For example  countries  states  mobile carriers  etc   The way I have it set up now  is I have a bunch of create statements in files in  db fixtures and a rake task that processes them   For example  one model I have is themes   I have a theme rb file in  db fixtures that looks like this   Theme delete all Theme create  id   gt  1   name  gt  Lite    background color  gt  0xC7FFD5    title text color  gt  0x222222                          component theme color  gt  0x001277    carrier select color  gt  0x7683FF    label text color  gt  0x000000                          join upper gradient  gt  0x6FAEFF    join lower gradient  gt  0x000000    join text color  gt  0xFFFFFF                          cancel link color  gt  0x001277    border color  gt  0x888888    carrier text color  gt  0x000000    public   gt  true   Theme create  id   gt  2   name  gt  Metallic    background color  gt  0x000000    title text color  gt  0x7299FF                          component theme color  gt  0xDBF2FF    carrier select color  gt  0x000000    label text color  gt  0xDBF2FF                          join upper gradient  gt  0x2B25FF    join lower gradient  gt  0xBEFFAC    join text color  gt  0x000000                          cancel link color  gt  0xFF7C12    border color  gt  0x000000    carrier text color  gt  0x000000    public   gt  true   Theme create  id   gt  3   name  gt  Blues    background color  gt  0x0060EC    title text color  gt  0x000374                          component theme color  gt  0x000374    carrier select color  gt  0x4357FF    label text color  gt  0x000000                          join upper gradient  gt  0x4357FF    join lower gradient  gt  0xffffff    join text color  gt  0x000000                          cancel link color  gt  0xffffff    border color  gt  0x666666    carrier text color  gt  0x000000    public   gt  true  puts  Success  Theme data loaded    The idea here is that I want to install some stock themes for users to start with   I have a problem with this method   Setting the ID does not work   This means that if I decide to add a theme  let s call it  Red   then I would simply like to add the theme statement to this fixture file and call the rake task to reseed the database   If I do that  because themes belong to other objects and their id s change upon this re-initialization  all links are broken    My question is first of all  is this a good way to handle seeding a database   In a previous post  this was recommended to me    If so  how can I hard code the IDs  and are there any downsides to that   If not  what is the best way to seed the database   I will truly appreciate long and thought out answers that incorporate best practices

User · Answer

Usually there are 2 types of seed data required.

Basic data upon which the core of your application may rely. I call this the common seeds.
Environmental data, for example to develop the app it is useful to have a bunch of data in a known state that us can use for working on the app locally (the Factory Girl answer above covers this kind of data).

In my experience I was always coming across the need for these two types of data. So I put together a small gem that extends Rails' seeds and lets you add multiple common seed files under db/seeds/ and any environmental seed data under db/seeds/ENV for example db/seeds/development.

I have found this approach is enough to give my seed data some structure and gives me the power to setup my development or staging environment in a known state just by running:

rake db:setup

Fixtures are fragile and flakey to maintain, as are regular sql dumps.

User · Answer

factory bot sounds like it will do what you are trying to achieve  You can define all the common attributes in the default definition and then override them at creation time  You can also pass an id to the factory   Factory define  theme do  t    t background color  0x000000    t title text color  0x000000     t component theme color  0x000000    t carrier select color  0x000000    t label text color  0x000000     t join upper gradient  0x000000    t join lower gradient  0x000000    t join text color  0x000000     t cancel link color  0x000000    t border color  0x000000    t carrier text color  0x000000    t public true end  Factory  theme   id   gt  1   name   gt   Lite    background color   gt   0xC7FFD5   Factory  theme   id   gt  2   name   gt   Metallic    background color   gt   0xC7FFD5   Factory  theme   id   gt  3   name   gt   Blues    background color   gt   0x0060EC     When used with faker it can populate a database really quickly with associations without having to mess about with Fixtures  yuck    I have code like this in a rake task    100 times do     Factory  company   address   gt  Factory  address    employees   gt   Factory  employee    end

User · Answer

Add it in database migrations  that way everyone gets it as they update  Handle all of your logic in the ruby rails code  so you never have to mess with explicit ID settings

User · Answer

Using seeds rb file or FactoryBot is great  but these are respectively great for fixed data structures and testing   The seedbank gem might give you more control and modularity to your seeds  It inserts rake tasks and you can also define dependencies between your seeds  Your rake task list will have these additions  e g     rake db seed                      Load the seed data from db seeds rb  db seeds   seeds rb and db seeds ENVIRONMENT   seeds rb  ENVIRONMENT is the current environment in Rails env  rake db seed bar                  Load the seed data from db seeds bar seeds rb rake db seed common               Load the seed data from db seeds rb and db seeds   seeds rb  rake db seed development          Load the seed data from db seeds rb  db seeds   seeds rb and db seeds development   seeds rb  rake db seed development users    Load the seed data from db seeds development users seeds rb rake db seed foo                  Load the seed data from db seeds foo seeds rb rake db seed original             Load the seed data from db seeds rb

User · Answer

Updating since these answers are slightly outdated  although some still apply      Simple feature added in rails 2 3 4  db seeds rb  Provides a new rake task  rake db seed   Good for populating common static records like states  countries  etc     http   railscasts com episodes 179-seed-data   Note that you can use fixtures if you had already created them to also populate with the db seed task by putting the following in your seeds rb file  from the railscast episode    require  active record fixtures  Fixtures create fixtures    Rails root  test fixtures    operating systems     For Rails 3 x use  ActiveRecord  Fixtures  instead of  Fixtures  constant  require  active record fixtures  ActiveRecord  Fixtures create fixtures    Rails root  test fixtures    fixtures file name

User · Answer

The best way is to use fixtures     Note  Keep in mind that fixtures do direct inserts and don t use your model so if you have callbacks that populate data you will need to find a workaround

User · Answer

Rails has a built in way to seed data as explained here   Another way would be to use a gem for more advanced or easy seeding such as  seedbank   The main advantage of this gem and the reason I use it is that it has advanced capabilities such as  data loading dependencies and per environment seed data   Adding an up to date answer as this answer was first on google

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