Adding sample data to database using rake for a rails engine

Question

Hi,

I am trying out Rails engines by creating a classifieds engine where users can view/post/reply to classifieds.

The main application contains code for user authentication and profiles while there is an engine which I have created which will deal with the classifieds functionality.

Now I want to add some sample data to the database for the classifieds engine. So I created a rake file called 'sample_classifieds_data.rake' in 'vendor/plugins/classifieds/lib/tasks' and I added the yml files in 'vendor/plugins/classifieds/lib/tasks/sample_classifieds_data'

The code of the rake file and a sample yml file can be found here: http://gist.github.com/216776

Now the problem is that when I run the rake task, no error is being thrown but the values are not getting populated in the database.

Any ideas? BTW, it is development environment and the database is the development database.

I ran a similar rake task to populate sample users in the database which worked. the location of that rake file 'sample_data.rake' was located in 'lib/tasks'.

Answer 1

In rails edge, you can use the rake db:seed feature to add datas to your base. See the commit.

The use is pretty simple.

Create a db/seeds.rb file.
And put whatever code you want to seed your database in it.

For example :

Category.create!(:name => 'My Category')
Country.create!(:name => 'Cassoulet Land')

And when you want to seed your database, you could do a rake db:seed

If, for any reason, you do not wish to use edge (which would be comprehensible in a production environment), you can use the Seed Fu plugin, which quite does the trick for you.

Answer 2

Your task looks good. About the only thing would cause your task to fail silently is that the file you're passing to Fixture.new does not point to a yml or csv file.

Double check by modifying the put statement to print the full path of the file it imported, and compare what it prints against your directory structure.

For example, things will fail silently if your fixture files start with a capital letter? Categories.yml instead of categories.yml

Answer 3

The db:seed task was added in Rails 2.3.4. So no need to run edge.

http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2009/9/4/ruby-on-rails-2-3-4