Question

How should I go about loading (or updating) a database for my RoR application? This is a “one time” operation, so coding it in the application seems strange.

Also, how do I access the database after the application is running, do the models files sit somewhere on my server, accesible for “read-only”?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You essentially can write a script to load data into the database from CSV files.

The following is an example how you can do that:

require 'rubygems'
require 'csv'

infile  = "db/data/csv/my_data.csv" # location of the file
count   = 0

CSV.open(infile, 'r') do |row|
  col1 = row[1]
  col2 = row[2]

  obj = MyObject.new({ :col1 => col1, :col2  => col2 })
  obj.save

  count += 1
  print '.' if (count % 10) == 0
end 

puts 
puts "Successfully loaded #{count} records into database!"

Then run the script using rails command line tool runner: rails runner db/scripts/csv_data_loader.rb.