Add Rows on Migrations

Question

I\'d like to know which is the preferred way to add records to a database table in a Rails Migration. I\'ve read on Ola Bini\'s book (Jruby on Rails) that he does something

Answer 1

You could use fixtures for that. It means having a yaml file somewhere with the data you want to insert.

Here is a changeset I committed for this in one of my app:

db/migrate/004_load_profiles.rb

require 'active_record/fixtures'

class LoadProfiles < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    down()

    directory = File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), "init_data")
    Fixtures.create_fixtures(directory, "profiles")
  end

  def self.down
    Profile.delete_all
  end
end

db/migrate/init_data/profiles.yaml

admin:
 name: Admin
  value: 1
normal:
 name: Normal user
  value: 2