initially populate data in rails if database is empty from application

Question

I have created database migration, and migrated data both on development and production servers. I would like to populate database from the application, if it is empty and avoid rake db:seed and other similar methods. I know that it could be done through rake db:seed, but since application is already deployed I would not like to pollute deploy.rb for capistrano, or do it manually on both development and production.

Is there any hook on database open or initialization of Active Record where I can do something like

if !Pages.first
  Pages.populate
end

I am aware of all recommended methods to populate database, but I would still prefer to do it from app.

Thanks

Answer 1

As you eluded to, this is not the best idea in the world, but maybe you could try using on of these approaches:

1. An initializer that will get called each time the rails environment is loaded.
2. Something in the config.after_initialize block. See http://guides.rubyonrails.org/configuring.html