Seeding Services

It is common to populate the database with mock data while developing and testing applications. This process is known as seeding, and the feathers-seeder plugin makes this easy. feathers-seeder seeds your services, so you can seed any database in the exact same way.

Installing feathers-seeder

First, install the plugin.

$ npm install --save feathers-seeder

Next, modify your src/app.js to look somewhat like this:

const feathers = require('feathers');
const seeder = require('feathers-seeder');
const seederConfig = require('./seeder-config');

const app = feathers();

app
  .configure(seeder(seederConfig));

module.exports = app;

Create a src/seeder-config.js file:

module.exports = {
  services: [
    {
      path: 'users',
      template: {
        name: '{{name.firstName}} {{name.lastName}}',
        password: '{{internet.password}}'
      }
    }
  ]
};

Lastly, in your src/server.js:

app.seed().then(() => {
  const server = app.listen(app.get('port'));
  // ...
}).catch(err => {
  // ...
});

feathers-seeder expects your configuration object to have a services array, where you can provide a template (which will be filled by @marak/Faker.js) that will be inserted into your service.

The configuration options are described in depth here.

Seeding Nested Services

A common scenario is having a service that relies directly on another service. feathers-seeder allows you to include a callback function inside your configuration, so that you can interact with the instances you create.

For example, if you had a service called apartments, and another called apartments/:apartmentId/tenants:

export default const seederConfig = {
  services: [
    {
      count: 25, // Create 25 apartments
      path: 'apartments',
      template: {
        city: '{{address.city}}',
        zip: '{{address.zipCode}}'
      },

      callback(apartment, seed) {
        // Create 10 tenants for each apartment
        return seed({
          count: 10,
          path: 'apartments/:apartmentId/tenants',
          template: {
            name: '{{name.firstName}} {{name.lastName}}',
            email: '{{internet.email}}'
          },
          params: {
            apartmentId: apartment._id
          }
        });
      }

    }
  ]
};

Keep in mind, your callback function must return a Promise.

Again, all configuration options are listed here. Happy seeding!