Hi, I'm ThadeusB.

So you are ready to deploy your newly finished web2py app, but you don't like the idea of having to manually insert all of this fixture data again!

Create a new model, and name it x_fixtures.py. This way it will execute after all of your models.

Then for every table that you want to pre-populate use the following snippet. I will use an example for the auth_user table to pre-create a test user.

if db(db.auth_user.id > 0).count() == 0:
    db.auth_user.insert(
        first_name='Testers',
        last_name='Inc',
        email='test@user.com',
        password='<include a pre-encrypted password here>',
    )

Basically, if we have no records in the table, insert the defaults! This is probably more useful in situations where you have pre-defined data that can be dynamic, such as a list of status codes.

if db(db.status.id > 0).count() == 0:
   db.status.insert(name='pending', kkey='P')
   db.status.insert(name='processing', kkey='R')
   db.status.insert(name='done', kkey='D')

You can easily keep your data fixtures in a YAML file and load them into the database by using the pyyaml library.

Here is the example YAML file for what we just inserted.

auth_user:
    - first_name: Testers
      last_name: Inc
      email: test@user.com
      password: <include a pre-encrypted password here>
status:
    - name: In-Queue
      kkey: Q
    - name: Pending
      kkey: P
    - name: Processing
      kkey: R
    - name: Done
      kkey: D

We just open the file, pass this to pyyaml, and insert into the database, easy right?

import yaml

data = yaml.load(open('/path/to/applications/myapp/private/fixtures.yaml'))

for table_name, rows in data:
    for r in rows:
        db[table_name].insert(
            **r
        )

Video on Generate web2py model by using yaml -> http://vimeo.com/10837176

Now you have gone done it, you placed your code on the production server, and found a bug! Now we need to reset the database to square one.

Note: Your table indexes will not reset to 0

Add the following code to the top of your x_fixtures.py file, when you want to reset the database, just change RESET to True.

RESET = False

if RESET:
    for table in db.tables:
        # Make sure to cascade, or this will fail 
        # for tables that have FK references.
        db[table].truncate("CASCADE")    
    db.commit()

Make sure to remove your x_fixtures.py file when you are ready to go live! And compile that app!