Seeder

The seeder creates pages, layout pages, and users from YAML files. Use it to set up a consistent page structure across environments or to bootstrap a fresh database.

Setup

The installer adds Alchemy::Seeder.seed! to your db/seeds.rb automatically. If you skipped the installer or need to add it manually:

# db/seeds.rb
Alchemy::Seeder.seed!

Then run:

bin/rails db:seed

Seeding Pages

Create a db/seeds/alchemy/pages.yml file with your page hierarchy. The file must contain exactly one root content page. Nest children under the children key:

# db/seeds/alchemy/pages.yml
- name: Homepage
  page_layout: index
  children:
    - name: About Us
      page_layout: standard
    - name: Blog
      page_layout: blog
      children:
        - name: First Post
          page_layout: blogpost
          public_on: 2025-01-15
    - name: Contact
      page_layout: contact

Each entry accepts any Alchemy::Page attribute. The most common ones:

Attribute	Description
name	Page name shown in the admin
page_layout	Must match a layout defined in page_layouts.yml
public_on	Publish date (Date or DateTime). Omit for unpublished drafts
children	Nested array of child pages

Layout Pages

Layout pages (headers, footers, sidebars) are global pages not part of the content tree. Mark them with layoutpage: true:

- name: Homepage
  page_layout: index
  children:
    - name: About Us
      page_layout: standard

- name: Footer
  layoutpage: true
  page_layout: footer

- name: Header
  layoutpage: true
  page_layout: header

Seeding Users

Create a db/seeds/alchemy/users.yml file. Each entry is passed directly to your user model's create! method, so the attributes depend on your user model:

# db/seeds/alchemy/users.yml
- email: [email protected]
  password: secret123
  alchemy_roles:
    - admin

- email: [email protected]
  password: secret123
  alchemy_roles:
    - editor

WARNING

User seeds are meant for development and staging environments. Do not commit real credentials.

Idempotent Behavior

The seeder checks for existing data before creating records:

• Pages — skips if any pages exist in the database
• Users — skips if any users exist in the database

To reseed, reset the database first:

bin/rails db:reset

Default Site and Language

If no site or language exists when seeding pages, the seeder creates them from your configuration. Make sure your initializer has these configured before seeding.