Cuttings

Cuttings allows you to create seed data with a simple DSL that aims to shorten your seeding code and keeping it readable.

Attachment seeding is made to work with Paperclip's way to assing files.

Add to your Gemfile and bundle install :

gem 'cuttings'

Then create the directory structure with the install generator :

rails generate cuttings:install

Your can use Cuttings in your db/seeds.rb file, or inside rake tasks, depending on which method you prefer.

If you choose the db/seeds.rb file way, just use the API as explained in the DSL section.

If you choose the rake task way, a generator is provided to help you organize your seed tasks.

But a generator is provided to help you create separated seed data accessible with rake tasks.

rails generate cuttings users

Which will generate the following file in lib/seeds/tasks/users.rake

namespace :seed do
  task users: :environment do
    Cuttings.plant do
      # Add your seeding code here
    end
  end
end

namespace :seed do
  task users: :environment do
    Cuttings.plant do
      truncate %w(Visit)

      seed 'User' do
        create(
          name: 'Jean Jean',
          email: 'jean@jean.com',
          avatar: attachment('user.png')
        )
      end
    end
  end
end

The DSL is quite simple, and gives you just the tools you need to get a clean and readable seed file.

To empty model tables, you can use the #truncate method followed by a list of model names.

This is used to empty tables from models you won't seed, and is equivalent to calling .destroy_all on all provided models.

Cuttings.plant do
  truncate %w(Visit)
end

To seed a model, you'll use the #seed method. The #seed method automatically truncates the table of the model. If you don't want it to do so, you can pass truncate: false as the second argument.

seed 'User', truncate: false do
  ...
end

To create your model's instances, you'll have to call #create inside the #seed method block, and give it a hash of attributes to assign.

seed 'Product' do
  create(name: 'Rope', price: 12.90)
end

To seed attachments, start by adding your attachment to your lib/seeds/attachments folder. You'll then be able to use the #attachment helper method from inside the #seed method block to pass it to your model's creation.

seed 'User' do
  create(
    name: 'Jean Jean',
    email: 'jean@jean.com',
    avatar: attachment('user.png')
  )
end

This project rocks and uses MIT-LICENSE.