Superseeder

Easily seed Rails models from sheet files. Currently supported formats are

• .csv
• .xls
• .xlsx
• .ods
• .tsv.
• .yml

Support for other formats can easily be added and contributed back here. :)

The gem supports both Mongoid and ActiveRecord.

You may need to add some additional gems to your gemfile dpending on the file types you want to load

Let's say you want to seed the following models with their relations:

class Car < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :parking
  validates :name, :presence => true
end

class Parking < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :cars
  validates :name, :presence => true, :uniqueness => true
end

Create a db/seeds/data folder. Add seed files in your favorite format. For instance:

db/seeds/data/cars.csv
db/seeds/data/parkings.csv

In db/seeds/seeds.rb, simply include Superseeder and call seed for each of the models:

include Superseeder
seed :cars
seed :parkings

Use rake db:seed as usual.

Seeds are easy to write. For instance, for above models, your files are expected to look like:

db/seeds/data/cars.csv

db/seeds/parkings.csv

name| ----|- south| east| west| north|

 # db/seeds/seeds.rb
 include Superseeder
 seed :parkings
 seed :cars

Note that

• the seeds are ordered, parkings is seeded before car since cars need to find existing parkings to set up relations.
• the ca'rs parking relation is set with the parking's name. You can match any column of a model`s relation by titling the column relation_column. Matching multiple columns to yield a single entry is also possible.

You can of course seed relations the other way around:

db/seeds/data/cars.csv

name| ----|- Mustang| Corvette| BMW|

db/seeds/parkings.csv

 # db/seeds/seeds.rb
 include Superseeder
 seed :cars
 seed :parkings

If you want to apply special logic for a seed, just pass a block to seed:

seed :cars do |row|
  #Do it your way
end

each row of the seed file will be passed as a hash.

You can allow a model to seed itself:

model Car
  extend Superseeder::Seedable
end
Car.seed

You can seed a model and its inherited models from a single file provided you add a '_type' column containing the subclass name.

model Car
end

model RentedCar < Car
end

will seed

Car.new :name => 'Mustang'
RentedCar.new :name => 'Corvette'
Car.new :name => 'BMW'

seed takes a number of options:

• :filename to specify a file name not matching a model name

   seed :cars, :filename => 'last_dump.csv'

• :many_sep to specify the separator in array relations

   seed :parkings, :many_sep => '@'

• :update_by to update records instead of creating them

   seed :parkings, :update_by => :name

That will find each record by its name and update all its attributes if they differ from the seed file. This option allows you to modify a seed file and update your database without having to worry about your seed models changing id for instance. In order to find the single record to update, you can match several columns

   seed :parkings, :update_by => [:name, :color]

or you can pass a Proc that will take as argument the class of the instance to create and the row as an array.

   seed :parkings, :update_by => ->(instance_class, row){ instance_class.find_by :name => row[0] }

• Roo options.

You can pass any option supported by the Roo gem (https://github.com/roo-rb/roo) to read files, such as encoding, CSV column separator, etc.

   seed :parkings, csv_options: { col_sep: ';' } # default is ','

Check their documentation for more information.

If you're having a difficult time understanding why some of your models won't be seeded, you can turn the verbose mode on before calling seed:

   # db/seeds.rb
   include Superseeder
   Superseeder.verbose!

   seed :cars

I appreciate any help to make this gem more robust and flexible.

If you want to add support for other formats, here's how to do it:

Add a module in the superseeder format namespace that look like:

# my_format.rb
module Superseeder
  module Formats
    module MyFormat

      def self.extensions
      # list of supported extensions, ex: %w(.mft .x4t)
      end

      def __process(path, *args)
        # Add code for parsing your format.
      end
    end
  end
end

(The MIT License)

Copyright © 2014 Olivier Milla

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the ‘Software’), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.