# How to seed a Rails database with a CSV file
## 1. Setup
First, Create a folder inside of `lib` called `seeds`
Put your CSV file `example.csv` into the `lib/seeds` folder. In the example below, the file is called `real_estate_transactions.csv`
Make sure you've created a resource with the appropriate columns to match your seed data. The names don't have to match up.
## 2. Read in a CSV file
Add the following lines to your `seeds.rb` file:
require 'csv'
csv_text = File.read(Rails.root.join('lib', 'seeds', 'real_estate_transactions.csv'))
puts csv_text
The first line requires the Ruby CSV library we need to properly parse the CSV data. The next line reads in the CSV file into a variable. The last line prints the contents of the variable. When you run `rake db:seed` you should see a wall of text representing your CSV data. It's a first step, but we've still got a lot of work to do.
We'll keep building off this code until we've created a working seeds file. You should be able to run `rake db:seed` at the end of each step
## 3. Parse the CSV
require 'csv'
csv_text = File.read(Rails.root.join('lib', 'seeds', 'real_estate_transactions.csv'))
csv = CSV.parse(csv_text, :headers => true, :encoding => 'ISO-8859-1')
puts csv
The new line converts the CSV file into a structure that Ruby can read. The `:headers => true` option tells the parser to ignore the first line of the CSV file.
## 4. Looping through the parsed data
require 'csv'
csv_text = File.read(Rails.root.join('lib', 'seeds', 'real_estate_transactions.csv'))
csv = CSV.parse(csv_text, :headers => true, :encoding => 'ISO-8859-1')
csv.each do |row|
puts row.to_hash
end
This new addition loops through the entire CSV file and converts each row of the document into a hash. The headers of the CSV file will be used as keys for the hash because we added the `:headers => true` option in our previous step.
## 5. Create a database object from each row
require 'csv'
csv_text = File.read(Rails.root.join('lib', 'seeds', 'real_estate_transactions.csv'))
csv = CSV.parse(csv_text, :headers => true, :encoding => 'ISO-8859-1')
csv.each do |row|
t = Transaction.new
t.street = row['street']
t.city = row['city']
t.zip = row['zip']
t.zip = row['zip']
t.state = row['state']
t.beds = row['beds']
t.sq_feet = row['sq_feet']
t.category = row['type']
t.sale_date = row['sale_date']
t.price = row['price']
t.lat = row['latitude']
t.lng = row['longitude']
t.save
puts "#{t.street}, #{t.city} saved"
end
puts "There are now #{Transaction.count} rows in the transactions table"