Best way to fill development db in rails

Question

I need to fill the test development database with data, for example from factorygirl, but I'd like to use it from rails console.
How I put example data in db so I can fetch it from console and do some test there?

Answer 1

Faker is also a good solution.

Here's how my lib/tasks/sample_data.rake looks like. I run it with rake db:populate.

Creates 50 entries with random info.

require 'faker'

namespace :db do
  desc "Fill database with sample data"
  task :populate => :environment do
    Rake::Task['db:reset'].invoke
    50.times do |n|
      name  = Faker::Company.name
      year = 1900+rand(111)
      rating = 1+rand(10)
      watched = (1 == rand(2) ? true : false)
      imdb_id = rand(1000000)
      Movie.create!(:name => name,
                    :year => year,
                    :rating => rating,
                    :watched => watched,
                    :imdb_id => imdb_id)
    end
  end
end

Answer 2

I've made a gem test_dummy that works like Factory Girl to define lots of fake data. When properly configured you can do things like this:

# Create 100 fake companies
100.times { Company.create_dummy }

# Create a single fake company on-demand
fake_company = Company.create_dummy

The alternative is to use the db/seeds.rb facility or to load in your fixtures into your development environment.