Welcome to The RailsNotes Newsletter — Issue #3!

Thank you to all 146 of you for subscribing! 🎉🥳

It’s been a busy week for RailsNotes this week! I published a post on database seeding with the faker gem (see below), which was featured in the excellent Ruby Weekly Newsletter.

I’ve also been diving into ideas for new posts, including lazy-loading with Hotwire, and using the Overmind gem to replace bin/dev. Some of you also replied to last week’s newsletter with some suggestions of your own, which was amazing ❤️

I also have a request for you — Please share this newsletter with an interested friend or co-worker! It would help me out heaps.

One day, I hope that I’ll be able to focus on RailsNotes full/part-time (rather than after hours and during my lunch breaks like I do now 😅), and sharing this newsletter is a great way to help me get there.

Thanks, Harrison.

Featured Article —

• Rails 7 adds new options to upsert_all (blog.kiprosh.com) — This article gives a great overview of the upsert_all and insert_all methods that Rails 7 introduced. This article goes much more in-depth than I did, so if you’re interested in learning more (and there is a lot more to learn), this article is a great place to start.

• Ruby On Rails: way to create different seeds file for environment (stackoverflow.com) — This StackOverflow thread was the inspiration for the per-environment database seeding I explained in my article. It’s a simple and elegant solution, and it’s perfect for most situations where you want to split up your seeds.rb file.

• Add rails db:seed:replant (github.com) — This is the Github issue where DHH suggested adding the rails db:seed:replant command into Rails (see the tip below). This is a quick read (just a few comments on a Github issue), but I really enjoyed the glimpse into DHH’s thinking. Great quote from the issue — “This is as much about being clear about your intentions as about outcomes.“  _DHH

A handy tip — re-seed your database with rails db:seed:replant

Rails 6 introduced the db:seed:replant command, but it flew under the radar for most people.

:replant will re-run your database seeds (after TRUNCATE-ing all your database tables to clear them).

In practice, the benefits over db:reset are not huge — :replant runs a bit quicker, since it doesn’t have to delete tables and re-run your migrations. Some though (including DHH), would argue that it’s clearer about what you’re trying to achieve (re-seeding, rather than re-setting).

This tip probably won’t change your life, but I always love to discover little easter eggs like this inside Rails (based on my tweet, a lot of you do too). If you know of any other cool easter eggs like this, reply to this email with them! 

# re-seed your database (without db:reset)
# benefits — 
# - slightly quicker, 
# - clearer intentions, 
# - no db tables deleted

❯ rails db:seed:replant