What is the function of the seeds.rb file?
ruby-on-rails, seed
Solution
Bootstrapping Data
The purpose of seed data is to bootstrap your database. For example, if you have a users table where you track users' city and state, you may want to seed a related table with U.S. state names and abbreviations before creating the first user.
Likewise, you may also want to seed things like administrative accounts, or other data that's necessary to run your application for the first time. As a general rule, you shouldn't add anything to a seeds.rb file that isn't necessary to bootstrap your database or its relations.
Related Rake Tasks
The seeds.rb file is where the seed data is stored, but you need to run the appropriate rake task to actually use the seed data. Using `rake -T` in your project directory shows information about following tasks:
- rake db:seed Load the seed data from db/seeds.rb
- rake db:setup Create the database, load the schema, and initialize with the seed data
- rake db:reset Same as `rake db:setup`, but drop the database first
So, you can run `rake db:seed` to run the seeds.rb file manually at any time. However, in most cases you will probably want to run `rake db:setup` or `rake db:reset` instead whenever you bootstrap your application.
Problem
I am very new to Ruby on Rails. I don't know what the function of the `seed.rb` file is, why we use this file, and why we need to run the `rake db:seed` command. Can anyone give an explanation with examples?