genesis

A data seeding solution for Ruby on Rails providing seeding facilities far more advanced than the current built in Ruby on Rails solution.

HISTORY

This gem is a continuation of my db-seed project (github.com/midas/db-seed).

I cannot claim the idea for this plugin or all of the implementation to be entirely mine. I have basically taken the db-populate plugin by Josh Knowles and added some functionality outlined at RailsSpikes and then extended it with my own ideas. That said, genesis does work more like Rails active record migrations than db-populate or the other db seeding tools currently available.

FEATURES

Prepare seeding generator
Genesis seed file generator similar to the Rails migration generator
Seed version task
Seeding task
Database mulligan task (runs db:migrate:reset and then seeds)
Only run seeds from the all and the current environment folder the task is being executed within (ie. all seeds from db/seeds and db/seeds/production when rake db:genesis RAILS_ENV=production)

COMPATABILITY

Ruby 1.8
Rails 3
Rails 2 (no generators)

TODO

Add option to override Rails db:seed task
Add ability to automatically generate the down seed from the up, if possible

REQUIREMENTS

ActiveRecord >= 2.0

INSTALL

gem sources -a http://gemcutter.org
sudo gem install genesis

Run the prepare seeding generator to create a lib/tasks/genesis.rake file:

rails generate genesis:install    # Rails 3

Or to specify which environments to create:

rails generate genesis:install [development,staging,production]       # Rails 3

Generate a seed file:

rails generate genesis:seed create_users    # Rails 3

This will generate a seed file for you in the db/seeds directory.

Generate a seed file in a specific environment folder:

rails generate genesis:seed create_users production     # Rails 3

This will generate a seed file for you in the db/seeds/production directory.

Finally, simply populate the self.up and self.down methods of the generated seed file. The seed is a normal Ruby class.

For convenience, ActiveRecord is extended with the following methods:

create_or_update_by_all

user = User.create_or_update_by_all( :name => 'John Smith', :number => '012345', :status => 'active' )

Will try to find a user with the name ‘John Smith’ and number ‘012345’. If found, will return, otherwise will create the user and return it.

create_or_update_by_some

user = User.create_or_update_by_some( :find_by => { :name => 'John Smith', :status => 'active' }, :number => '012345' )

Will try to find a user with the name ‘John Smith’ and a status of ‘active.’ If found will update with other attributes and save returning it. If not found, will create the user with all the attributes (name, status and number) and return it.

create_or_update_by_attribute

user = User.find_or_update_by_name( :name => 'John Smith', :number => '012345', :status => 'active' )

Will try to find a user with the name ‘John Smith.’ If found will update with other attributes and save returning it. If not found, will create the user with all the attributes (name and number) and return it.

Note on Patches/Pull Requests

Fork the project.
Make your feature addition or bug fix.
Add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.
Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

LICENSE

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.