Seed Loader – YAML seed file loading for Rails.¶ ↑

Seed Loader enables you to write seed files in YAML and load them into the database.

The latest version of Seed Loader can be installed with Rubygems:

% [sudo] gem install seed_loader

Include the gem in your Gemfile:

gem 'seed_loader'

Source code can be downloaded from Github:

* http://github.com/dunkelbraun/seed_loader

Put your YAML based seeds into db/seeds/model_table_name.yml

For a Country model with attributes name and population, 
the seed file (db/seeds/countries.yml) content would be:

country_1:
  name: Australia
  population: 1233344

For belongs_to relationships, you can reference the relationship with the seed name.
If a City belongs to a country then:
  city_1:
    name: Melbourne
    country: country_1

You can also write ruby code inside the YAML seed files:
  city_1:
    name: Melbourne
    country: country_1
    founded_in: <%= 30.years.ago.to_s(:db) %>

In the db/seeds.rb file

SeedLoader::Loader.seed_files_to_db

Run the seeds rake task

rake db:seed

Seed Loader is released under the MIT license.