• Create a Rails API project called rails-engine (make sure you do not set up a “traditional” Rails project with a frontend, this is an API-only project).

• Set Up SimpleCov to track test coverage in your rails-engine API project.

• Download rails-engine-development.pgdump and move it into the /db/ folder in another folder called /data/, so your project files look like this:

/app
/bin
/config
/db
  /data                                     <-- create this folder
 rails-engine-development.pgdump         <-- put the file in the data folder
  seeds.rb                                  <-- seeds.rb is in `/db/` folder, not `/db/data/`
/lib
/log
etc

• this file is in a binary format and your browser may try to automatically download the file instead of viewing it

• Set up your db/seeds.rb file with the following content:

cmd = "pg_restore --verbose --clean --no-acl --no-owner -h localhost -U $(whoami) -d rails-engine_development db/data/rails-engine-development.pgdump"
puts "Loading PostgreSQL Data dump into local database with command:"
puts cmd
system(cmd)

• Run rake db:{drop,create,migrate,seed} and you may see lots of output including some warnings/errors from pg_restore that you can ignore. If you’re unsure about the errors you’re seeing, ask an instructor.

• Run rails db:schema:dump - Check to see that your schema.rb exists and has the proper tables/attributes that match the data in Postico. You can do the following to check to see if you have set up rails to effectively communicate with the database.

  • Add a customer.rb file to your models directory
  • Create a Customer class that inherits from ApplicationRecord
  • run rails c to jump into your rails console.
  • run Customer.first to see the object: #<Customer id: 1, first_name: "Joey", last_name: "Ondricka", created_at: "2012-03-27 14:54:09", updated_at: "2012-03-27 14:54:09">
  • run Customer.last to see the object: #<Customer id: 1000, first_name: "Shawn", last_name: "Langworth", created_at: "2012-03-27 14:58:15", updated_at: "2012-03-27 14:58:15">

If this all checks out you should be good to go.

• Use a tool like Postico to examine the 6 tables that were created. Pay careful attention to the data types of each field:
  • merchants
  • items
  • customers
  • invoices
  • invoice_items
  • transactions

NOTE We updated this process to avoid confusion and taking a significant amount of time; the main learning goals of the project are the Rails API endpoints, not the process of importing CSV data. Avoid starting out with a Rake task to do the import and follow these instructions instead. If in doubt, ask your instructors first.

NOTE If your rails new ... project name from above is NOT exactly called “rails-engine” you will need to modify the cmd variable below to change the -d parameter from rails-engine_development to _development instead. If you have questions, ask your instructors.