Rails 4.2 Using Heart Seed to import data on Heroku

Question

I am using heartseed gem to import data in my rails application. It is working fine in my local machine.

When I try to do the same on heroku I get the following error.

** Invoke db:seed (first_time)
** Execute db:seed
** Invoke db:abort_if_pending_migrations (first_time)
** Invoke environment (first_time)
** Execute environment
** Execute db:abort_if_pending_migrations
rake aborted!
require TABLES or CATALOGS if production
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/heart_seed-0.1.0/lib/heart_seed/db_seed.rb:73:in `import_all'
/app/db/seeds.rb:10:in `<top (required)>'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activesupport-4.2.3/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:268:in `load'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activesupport-4.2.3/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:268:in `block in load'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activesupport-4.2.3/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:240:in `load_dependency'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activesupport-4.2.3/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:268:in `load'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/railties-4.2.3/lib/rails/engine.rb:547:in `load_seed'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activerecord-4.2.3/lib/active_record/tasks/database_tasks.rb:250:in `load_seed'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/activerecord-4.2.3/lib/active_record/railties/databases.rake:180:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/task.rb:240:in `call'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/task.rb:240:in `block in execute'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/task.rb:235:in `each'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/task.rb:235:in `execute'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/task.rb:179:in `block in invoke_with_call_chain'
/app/vendor/ruby-2.0.0/lib/ruby/2.0.0/monitor.rb:211:in `mon_synchronize'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/task.rb:172:in `invoke_with_call_chain'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/task.rb:165:in `invoke'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/application.rb:150:in `invoke_task'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/application.rb:106:in `block (2 levels) in top_level'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/application.rb:106:in `each'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/application.rb:106:in `block in top_level'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/application.rb:115:in `run_with_threads'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/application.rb:100:in `top_level'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/application.rb:78:in `block in run'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/application.rb:176:in `standard_exception_handling'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/lib/rake/application.rb:75:in `run'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/gems/rake-10.4.2/bin/rake:33:in `<top (required)>'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/bin/rake:23:in `load'
/app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.0.0/bin/rake:23:in `<main>'
Tasks: TOP => db:seed

On another note - I have tried http://railscasts.com/episodes/396-importing-csv-and-excel Roo for file upload and add data to database and it does not seem to work for me for rails 4.2 - can anyone guide me there as well pls?

Answer 1

It's always worth checking out the source code, this is the line that is throwing the error:

https://github.com/sue445/heart_seed/blob/master/lib/heart_seed/db_seed.rb#L73

It looks like you need to set the TABLES and CATALOGS environment variables to make this work in production (so on Heroku). You can set environment variables for your Heroku application with heroku config:set TABLES=... etc.

The Railscast you linked to is pretty old so there is a fair chance that things will have moved on a bit since then. The Roo gem seems to be actively maintained so you will probably find up-to-date info in the README at https://github.com/roo-rb/roo .

Generally whenever I have had to import data from a spreadsheet I've saved the file as CSV and then written a simple Ruby script or Rake file that just uses the CSV library ( http://docs.ruby-lang.org/en/2.2.0/CSV.html ) to do the import.