I am using yaml files to provide initialisation data for the database and also to provide initialisation data for some of my services models. Where should I store these files in a ruby on rails app?
Based on ruby_newbie's comment and the general lack of other responses, it seems that there is no well defined rails way for this. Reasonable locations are
rails_root/data
rails_root/config/data
rails_root/db/data
You should put any data required for your application to run in the seeds file(db/seeds.rb). http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_migrations.html#migrations-and-seed-data
If you need create a initial database state you can use seeds files in "db/seeds/". After you can use rake to run and create initial state in your database.
In seeds file you can use Rails model without problems and run a follow command rake to create entries.
take db:seed
You can check Rails Documentation:
http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_migrations.html#migrations-and-seed-data
There may be good use case for loading fixed data into a constant without needing to store in a database. Since this is technically fixed "data" I would suggest putting it in
rails_root/db/yaml/
# and you'll have files like
rails_root/db/yaml/measurments.yml
rails_root/db/yaml/locations.yml
# or if you prefer
rails_root/data/yaml/
Related
I am new with Ruby on Rails and have some issues with it. I am writing my application on Rails and i have to install some pre-defined data in my Database to use it in my application. This data is read-only and never change (for example users and roles. There are no use cases to create new users and roles).
So i have to install this data when my application runs first time. I tried to use Migrations to solve this problem, but my manager told me that it is not a right way, cause migrations are usually used to define DB structure changes and not to install any data in DB.
Can you please help me and tell better way to install my pre-defined data using Ruby on Rails?
You'll be able to achieve this using the seeds functionality:
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 rake db:seed:
#db/seeds.rb
User.create name: "test", description: "info"
$ rake db:seed
--
If you wanted static data, you'll be able to use a gem such as the config gem -- which gives you the ability to allocate values in config/settings.yml:
This data is then accessible as Settings.company...
You should use seeds. See this rails cast
You could also look at Dibber, that allows you to define your seeds via YML files.
What you are looking to do is seed the database. Rails comes with a db/seeds.rb that you can use to do this. There are also gems such as seed-fu that you could use.
Here is a short tutorial on seeding a database in Rails.
I've been looking for a week now. I'm using Rails 3.
I have a document section in my app and I'd like to populate the database with fake data. So far it was super easy: just add a .yml file in the Fixture folder and that's it.
Now what I'd like is to have a fixture file (.yml) that would populate the DB with documents when I rake db:fixtures:load. I just don't know how to achieve this. I've been looking to the fixture_file_upload function but I don't think it's the way to go.
Any idea? Thanks in advance.
Edit: to be perfectly clear, I'd like to upload a document that I list in my Document fixture. So when I rake db:fixtures:load, the document is actually uploaded.
Normally loading seed data is done using rake db:seed which just executes your db/seed.rb. There you can do anything you want.
If you want to reuse your fixtures you can just load them manually:
require 'active_record/fixtures'
ActiveRecord::Fixtures.create_fixtures(Rails.root.join('test/fixtures'),
'your_yml_file')
Pass the FIXTURES Environment Variable
Assuming that you have test/fixtures/documents.yml and that you don't mind clobbering the data currently in the documents table, you can load your fixture with:
rake db:fixtures:load FIXTURES=documents
If desired, you can also pass the appropriate RAILS_ENV to load your data into something other than your development database, such as test or production. Make sure you back up your database first, though. A typo could wipe out your current data set.
Are you installing fixture data for tests, or using test/fixtures to load fake development data? If the former is the case, it's hard because you don't want the test runner to be uploading a bunch of files between every test. If the latter is the case, then you ought to use rake db:seeds instead. That runs db/seeds.rb in the context of your Rails app. Use an environment flag to load the fake data in development only. Then you can use the API of your attachment library to "upload" the files.
I'm developing a Rails application and within that application I developed a Rake task that will read entries from a file and store them into the DB. Producing the code was no problem, but I'd like to know, where do I place the file that is read? Is there a convention for that, if yes, what is it?
I know I could have used the seed.rb file but is it ok, by the standards, to load and read a file from there?
Thanks in advance!
Yes, put the data you wish to load in the db/seeds.rb file and to load it run rake db:seed. This is what this file was designed to do.
I don't think there's a hard and fast Rails convention for this case. When it comes to seed data I put mine in a subfolder of db.
The yaml_db plugin dumps/loads content from/to the database from the file
rails_root/db/data.yml i'm not sure if this is by convention, however, the content is db related making the db folder an appropriate choice
Where to put stuff in Rails is a problem that I've been working around for a while. The question is whether your file can fit into one of the existing concerns. For instance, is it configuration information?
Anyway, perhaps a similar fit would be the schema.rb, which is put in the db directory. Do not modify the schema.rb with your data, of course: I'm merely suggesting that the db directory, or a subdirectory, might be a place to put your file(s).
On the other hand, if you don't see any directories that hold anything similar -- it's not one of the main categories in app, nor any of the main categories above that -- then you can just make up a name and use that.
I use Rails 2.3 i18n with a database backend plugin :
http://github.com/dylanz/i18n_backend_database
This stores my translations and locales in two DB tables. What would be the best way to get these tables working with my tests? I'm guessing I could write a rake task that would copy the tables from the development DB to the test DB.
Any suggestions?
You could put the data in a seeds.rb file and run that task when loading your test environment. The benefit of this is that you'll also have some way of regaining a basic data structure if you, for some reason, wipe your computer.
One thing you could try is using fixtures for this. Do a google search for db:fixtures:dump or db:fixtures:export_all Rolling own your own implementation should be pretty easy as well.
I have a rails application where each user has a separate database. (taking Joel Spolsky's advice on this). I want to run DB migrations from the rails application to create a new database and tables for this user.
What is the easiest way to do this?
Maybe the db migration is not the best for this type of thing. Thanks!
It would be nice if it could be a completely automated process. The following process would be ideal.
A user signs up on our site to use this web app
Migrations are run to create this users database and get tables setup correctly
Is there a way of calling a rake task from a ruby application?
To answer part of your question, here's how you'd run a rake task from inside Rails code:
require 'rake'
load 'path/to/task.rake'
Rake::Task['foo:bar:baz'].invoke
Mind you, I have no idea how (or why) you could have one database per user.
We use seperate configuration files for each user. So in the config/ dir we would have roo.database.yml which would connect to my personal database, and I would copy that over the database.yml file that is used by rails.
We were thinking of expanding the rails Rakefile so we could specify the developer as a environment variable, which would then select a specfic datbase configuration, allowing us to only have one database.yml file. We haven't done this though as the above method works well enough.
Actually I have discovered a good way to run DB migrations from an application:
ActiveRecord::Migrator.migrate("db/migrate/")