In my application, I have users and roles. Some of the roles should always exist, such as "Admin". Where should I do something like:
Role.create(name: 'Admin')
In the past, I've always placed these lines in a migration to ensure it ends up on the deployed server. This sometimes leads to issues as a developer may forget to instead write it like:
Role.where(name: 'Admin').first_or_create
Should they go in the seeds.rb file? I have generally used the seeds file for local development "playing around" data.
What is the Rails Best Practice for generating static data?
The seed.rb is the perfect place for that. Migrations are not meant to be used for anything other than convenience during development and should never be relied upon for really anything.
From the docs:
To add initial data after a database is created, Rails has a built-in
'seeds' feature that makes the process quick and easy. This is
especially useful when reloading the database frequently in
development and test environments. It's easy to get started with this
feature: just fill up db/seeds.rb with some Ruby code, and run rails
db:seed
http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_migrations.html#migrations-and-seed-data
Rails way is to use seeds.rb - simple and useful.
In my opinion, data migrations are needed only in situations when you must add data to existing records (after inserting new column with default value, for example)
Related
Happy New Year everyone.
In my Rails 4 application I have a table plans containing the records for the plans that a user can subscribe to.
It is absolutely paramount for the app that this table is populated at any time, in development, test, and production mode. Otherwise the app will not work.
What is the best way to create those records?
Should I put a create method into an initializer? Or set up a rake task and run it manually whenever I restart the server (sounds a bit cumbersome, though)?
Thanks for any help in this matter.
Rails has a 'seeds' feature that should be used for seeding a database with initial data.
It's a really simple feature: just fill up db/seeds.rb with some Ruby code, and run rake db:seed
source: http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_migrations.html#migrations-and-seed-data
If you want to use data in your test environment, you might also be interested in using fixtures for your plans. Take a look at http://guides.rubyonrails.org/testing.html#the-low-down-on-fixtures
I want to create a Rails app but I have a question before start it.
I have defined a database model in paper (about 15 tables) and I don't know which is the best way to start the application:
Create the tables on database with my database client and after that in console do:
rake db:schema:dump
with this I will obtain the shema.rb and after that do a :
rake db:migrate
or
In console, one to one, create the models, edit them with an editor and do:
rake db:migrate
I think the first one is more quickly but the second I think is better from the point of view of rails.
I am bit confused about that, can anyone help me with this question?
Rails mean the only sure way to create a database for a new application - migration.
You can create a single migration for all of your application but such migration is not easy to roll back.
Therefore wise to create a migration for each table.
Normal situation when you have 100,500 migrations in the end. For that you get your application is ready for deploy to combat server.
Permitted the creation of migration through model and scaffold or independently.
Why not use a generator?
rails g model User first_name last_name age:integer email user_name
You don't need to specify type if it's string. This will generate model class and migration.
I think there may be varying viewpoints on this issue.
Also, it depends if you're using the rails built-in sqlite database.
However, assuming that you do use the default rails db configurations,
I personally prefer the second choice.
Later, you might want to change some parts in your tables.
If you follow the rails way of doing so, this process will be very easy and less confusing.
Also, you can always add custom ruby scripts for pre-loading with data.
Of course, other people might find the other way easier.
I'm working on an app that must integrate with an existing database and other legacy apps. Throughout the legacy apps, implicit assumptions are made that certain records in certain tables exist.
For instance, legacy code assumes that a record with name 'Valid' exists in the table 'statuses', and a record with username 'System' exists in the users table.
As I'm digging into the legacy code, I'm writing down these implicit assumptions to make them explicit, so that I'm able to:
setup a small development db instead of using a dump of the very very huge production db;
setup a staging db (again, without the zillions of records from production);
run tests in a clean, predictable db.
be idempotent and DO NOT mess the existing db.
So the question is: what would you use to create system records if they don't exist?
Would you opt for a rails migration, seeds, an initializer or what?
I think seeds would be the way to go here.
I'm a PHP programmer for over a decade and making the move to RoR. Here is what I'm used to from the PHP world:
Create DB schema in a tool like MySQL WorkBench -- and make fields precisely the size I want without wasting space (e.g. varchar(15) if it's ip_address).
Write models using Datamapper and place those exact field lengths and specifications in there so my app doesn't try to put in any larger values.
In the RoR world from what I've seen over the past two days, this seems to be the flow suggested:
Add fields / schema using the command line which creates a migration script and apparently created large ass fields (e.g. "ip_address string" is probably making the field varchar(255) in the db when I run the migration).
Put in validations during model creation.
Am I missing something here? What's the process in the RoR world for enterprise level applications where you actually want to create a highly customized schema? Do I manually write out migration scripts?
The scaffolding is what you use to get started quickly. But before running the migration, you can edit it and add constraints and specific column lengths.
Validations specified in the model (in the ruby code) does not carry the same level of security as validations /constraints specified on the database. So you still need to define those on the database.
While it is possible to work with Rails without migrations, I would strongly advice against it. In some cases it cannot be avoided (when working with legacy databases for instance).
The biggest advantage of using the migrations is that your database schema, accross different platforms, can be held in sync through different stages. E.g. your development and your production database. When deploying your code, the migrations will take care that the database is migrated correctly.
You can edit the migration scripts before you run the migration in order to customize the fields.
Yes, if you need to tweak the defaults, you edit the migration scripts.
Also note that you don't need to use migrations, they're a "convenience" while iterating through DB development. There's nothing that says you must use them. The active record pattern doesn't rely on how the DB tables/fields/etc. are created or defined.
For example, migrations are useless when dealing with legacy DBs, but you can still write a Rails app around them.
I'm switching to RoR from ASP.NET MVC. Yeah, migrations are cool, but I do not need to use different databases in my web applications. Postgresql will do just fine.
So is it okay if I use PGAdmin to create and administer my databases and schema and avoid all these fancy migrate, rake etc?
Update
Thanks everyone! Now I better understand what migrations are, and why I should use them.
I don't think that's what migration means.
Migrations in rails (and in other frameworks) is a method by which you can use to update your database schema when there are multiple versions of the same database running
For example, you may have two databases, one running on your production server, and another running locally for development. After a few days of coding, your local development database may looks a bit different. With migrations, you can simply push your code to the production server and then run the migrations to automatically update your production database so it is up-to-date with the one you use locally for development.
So, to answer your question, Yes it is OK but you might not get a few of the migrations niceties when the time comes that you'll have to maintain multiple versions of your database.
Have to agree with charkit but one (rather two) important note why you should use migrations: Migrations don't make up the model definitions. They are stored seperately in a file schema.rb. This defines the rows and tables of your database. When looking into the file, you find these lines:
This file is auto-generated from the current state of the database. Instead of editing this file, please use the migrations feature of Active Record to incrementally modify your database, and then regenerate this schema definition.
The second reason is for testing: you can easily set up a test database to run all your tests against without the need to touch the "real" database. I know when developing, this is not a big problem but this will get more important after some time.
So, yes, it is possible to use PGAdmin to create all your database related stuff but you should not forget to always keep the schema file up to date and come up with a solution for testing.
With migrations you're able to develop your database schema in Ruby and this is usually database indpendent.
In short, spend the 20 minutes or so to really get migrations and the value they add. Then determine whether or not you want to ditch them. Strangely for me I learned Rails before I started my first MVC project; one of the things I missed most was migrations.
From a technical standpoint you should be fine without them.