Sometimes I find that I want pre-load my database with some data, like categories that I have. For testing purposes, I have already created this data in my fixture; now I just want to load that fixture into my database from a migration call.

I know that there is a rake task for this, so I looked into that code and came up with a little something.

require 'active_record/fixtures'

class CreateCategories < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :categories do |t|
      t.column :name, :string
    end

    Fixtures.create_fixtures('test/fixtures', File.basename("categories.yml", '.*'))
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :categories
  end
end

First I had to require active_record/fixtures. This allows me to call the Fixtures#create_fixtures method, which load my data. Now I can gaurantee that my fixture data will be loaded for any environment.

There is a simply_restful plugin available, which is what Rails 1.2 will be modeled after. The problem is that there will be differences between the plugin and the rails source. That means after using one, I have to refactor some code to include conventions like change my delete methods to destroy and some pluralizing stuff as well.

That’s where the simply_restful_backport plugin comes in. The author has made a plugin which implements the RESTful stuff as it will be in Rails 1.2. I am going to try it out this weekend and see how she fits.