nSurface

For a project I’m working on, there’s existing data that has to be in the database. The data exists in an excel spreadsheet which I then export as a CSV file. I then create the rake file lib/tasks/bootstrap.rake and place the following in it:

namespace :bootstrap do
      desc "populate database with data from data1.csv"
      task :default_data1 => :environment do
        lines = File.new('public/data/data1.csv').readlines
        header = lines.shift.strip
        keys = header.split(',')
        lines.each do |line|
          params = {}
          values = line.strip.split(',')
          keys.each_with_index do |key,i|
            params[key] = values[i]
          end
          Post.create(params)
        end
      end

      desc "populate database with data from data2.csv"
      task :default_data_2 => :environment do
        lines = File.new('public/data/data2.csv').readlines
        header = lines.shift.strip
        keys = header.split(',')
        lines.each do |line|
          params = {}
          values = line.strip.split(',')
          keys.each_with_index do |key,i|
            params[key] = values[i]
          end
          Post.create(params)
        end
      end

      desc "Run all bootstrapping tasks"
      task :all => [:default_data_1, :default_data_2]
    end

I’m uploading two CSV files that I’ve moved to public/data/. The data looks something like this:
[csv]
title,content,author
foo,lorem ipsum,john doe
bar,ipsum lorem,jane doe
[/csv]

and as long as the first line in the csv matches the fields in your model, they’ll slip right in.

finally, run rake bootstrap:all to make the magic happen!

credits: this code is a mashup of these two little code snippits: one two