Seed your database using your factory definitions.

Create the directory db/seeds/ in your Rails 2.3 application. Drop any number of files in there that you’d like to use to seed your database. For example, if I have a factory defined as “security_levels”, then:

# db/seeds/security_levels.rb
SecurityLevel.delete_all # Remove any old data

Factory.create(:security_level, :level => 0, :description => "No Access", :id => 1)
Factory.create(:security_level, :level => 1, :description => "Access to modules only", :id => 2)
Factory.create(:security_level, :level => 2, :description => "Access to all modules and reports", :id => 3)
Factory.create(:security_level, :level => 3, :description => "Access to everything", :id => 4)

Then, in my db/seeds.rb file:

# db/seeds.rb
FarmGirl.seed!

Now, I can execute the built-in Rake task for seeding my db in Rails:

$ rake db:seed

script/plugin install git://github.com/daphonz/farm_girl.git

This plugin needs (of course) FactoryGirl to work. So far I’ve used it in Rails 2.3. Make sure that you properly add the line

config.gem 'factory_girl', :version => '1.2.4'

in your main environment.rb file for the dependencies to load correctly.

Copyright © 2010 Casey Dreier and Singlebrook Technology, released under the MIT license.