Question

I have a Rails 3.2 Application that is hosted on Heroku.
I would like to try and avoid manually entering all of the data for each
new record. Is their an easy way for me to get my rails app to look at a
JSON file like this (except MUCH LARGER) and parse that information into
the database?

[   {
    "name": "Sierra Mist – Small Cup",
    "wwpplus": "5",
    "ssize": "451g",
    "calories": "190",
    "tfat": "0",
    "protein": "0",
    "fiber": "0",
    "carbs": "50",
    "restaurant_id": "12"
},
{
    "name": "Vanilla Shake regular",
    "wwpplus": "13",
    "ssize": "425g",
    "calories": "480",
    "tfat": "15",
    "protein": "14",
    "fiber": "0",
    "carbs": "74",
    "restaurant_id": "12"
},
{
    "name": "Vanilla Shake small",
    "wwpplus": "11",
    "ssize": "340g",
    "calories": "380",
    "tfat": "12",
    "protein": "11",
    "fiber": "0",
    "carbs": "60",
    "restaurant_id": "12"
}]

Answer 1

You could parse it in your db/seeds.rb file:

records = JSON.parse(File.read('path/to/file.json'))
records.each do |record|
  ModelName.create!(record)
end

Then heroku run rake db:seed