Ruby on Rails: loading seed data from a YAML file

Question

How do I use a YAML file instead of seeds.rb to load the initial data into a database?

Answer 1

Check out the Ruby on Rails Guide to fixtures:

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/testing.html#the-low-down-on-fixtures

Generally, you can create YAML fixture files in the test/ directory and then load them into your database using the rake db:fixtures:load command. The full documentation on all the cool things you can do with fixtures is here:

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/Fixtures.html