Rails recommended way to add sample data - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have a Rake script similar to below,but I am wondering if there is a more efficient way to do this, without having to drop the database, run all the migrations, reseed the database and then add the sample data?
namespace :db do
desc 'Fill database with sample data'
task populate: :environment do
purge_database
create_researchers
create_organisations
add_survey_groups_to_organisations
add_members_to_survey_groups
create_survey_responses_for_members
end
end
def purge_database
puts 'about to drop and recreate database'
system('rake db:drop')
puts 'database dropped'
system('rake db:create')
system('rake db:migrate')
system('rake db:seed')
puts 'Database recreated...'
end
def create_researchers
10.times do
researcher = User.new
researcher.email = Faker::Internet.email
researcher.save!
end
end

Answer 1

You should not fill your database with sample data via db:seed. That's not the purpose of the seeds file.
db:seed is for initial data that your app needs in order to function. It's not for testing and/or development purposes.
What I do is to have one task that populates sample data and another task that drops the database, creates it, migrates, seeds and populates. The cool thing is that it's composed of other tasks, so you don't have to duplicate code anywhere:
# lib/tasks/sample_data.rake
namespace :db do
desc 'Drop, create, migrate, seed and populate sample data'
task prepare: [:drop, :create, "schema:load", :seed, :populate_sample_data] do
puts 'Ready to go!'
end
desc 'Populates the database with sample data'
task populate_sample_data: :environment do
10.times { User.create!(email: Faker::Internet.email) }
end
end

Answer 2

I would suggest making rake db:seed self sufficient. By which I mean, you should be able to run it multiple times without it doing any damage, while ensuring that whatever sample data you need loaded gets loaded.
So, for your researches, the db:seed task should do something like this:
User.destroy_all
10.times do
researcher = User.new
researcher.email = Faker::Internet.email
researcher.save!
end
You can run this over and over and over and are ensured you will always end up with 10 random users.
I see this is for development. In that case, I wouldn't put it in db:seed as that might get run in production. But you can put it in a similar rake task that you can re-run as often as needed.