Rails seeding framework

README.md

RATIONALE

It's important to have useful test data during development and debugging, resembling real-world data. It can be cumbersome to setup and maintain though. This is a mini-framework to help with seeding in Rails using a Domain Specific Language approach.

DESIGN APPROACH

• I got tired of maintaining seeds.rb idempotently. Too dangerous to run this directly into production and overall, cumbersome to make it idempotent (ie work whether or not the objects already exist). So I decided to just make something that's just used for development, starting from an empty DB each time. I'm now maintaining a separate folder of individual data migrations to be performed in production. There's also separate fixtures for testing (separate data than this for performance reasons, and because tests need different kinds of data).
• It's modular enough for parts to be invoked during testing.
• The modularity is also part of a domain-specific language approach to seeding, as can be seen in the examples.

USAGE

Just include the files as above. This is a quick rough cut, you'll need to fill in more details.

model_makers.rb

# db/seeds/model_makers.rb

# A mixin with simple factory methods to generate objects.
# A little like Factory Girl. 
module ModelMakers
  
  def user(name, attribs={})
    User.create attribs.merge(name: name)
  end
  
  def stories(author, text, attribs={})
    author = Author.get(author) # general-purpose retriever (can support IDs, objects etc as args)
    Story.create attribs.merge(author: author, text: text)
  end
  
end

seeders.rb

# db/seeds/seeders.rb
class Seeders
  
  include ModelMakers
  include Singleton
  
  ### FRAMEWORK
 
  def self.seeder(name, &block)
    Seeders.seeders ||= []
    Seeders.seeders << name
    define_method("seed_#{name}", &block)
  end

  def run_all
    the_seeders = Seeders.seeders
    the_seeders.each { |seeder|
      puts "Seeding: #{seeder}"
      self.send "seed_#{seeder}"
    }
  end
  
  ### EXAMPLES OF SETTING UP THE UNIVERSE
  
  seeder "users" do
    user 'Jane'
    user 'Tito'
  end
  
  seeder 'stories' do
    story 'Jane', 'Doctors hate this medieval remedy'
    story 'Tito', 'This tardigrade wants to run for office'
  end
  
end

seeds.rb

# db/seeds.rb

if !Rails.env.in? %w(development test)
  puts 'run this only in dev/test'
  exit 1
end

DatabaseCleaner.clean_with :truncation, reset_ids: true
Seeders.instance.run_all