Question

Best way to load seed data? I have an Author table that is tightly coupled with a Users table. I also have migrations to alter both of these tables. I want to add a default admin user but I want to make sure that both tables are created and all migrations have run for these tables before my CreateDefaultAdmin (or whatever) migration runs. Is there a best practices for doing this? Sorry if this was already asked.

Answer 1

Your options:

1. Use migrations as outlined here: http://railspikes.com/2008/2/1/loading-seed-data
2. Use a 3rd party addon like: seed-fu or db-populate
3. Use fixtures, which is outlined in the rails spike article.
4. Wait for rails 3 and use the new seeds.rb: http://github.com/rails/rails/commit/4932f7b38f72104819022abca0c952ba6f9888cb

Personally I use a modified yaml-db. I like to build up all my seed data into my dev environment, and keep it backed up in my repository, when I go live I can load it with a rake task.