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

The Rails API documentation for migrations shows a simpler way to achieve this.

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Migration.html

class CreateProductCategories < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table "product_categories" do |t|
      t.string name
      # etc.
    end

    # Now populate the category list with default data

    ProductCategory.create :name => 'Books', ...
    ProductCategory.create :name => 'Games', ... # Etc.

    # The "down" method takes care of the data because it
    # drops the whole table.

  end

  def self.down
    drop_table "product_categories"
  end
end

Tested on Rails 2.3.0, but this should work for many earlier versions too.