Feeding data with a custom seed file

20 February 2016 
# lib/tasks/custom_seed.rake
namespace :db do
  namespace :seed do
    Dir[File.join(Rails.root, 'db', 'seeds', '*.rb')].each do |filename|
      task_name = File.basename(filename, '.rb').intern    
      task task_name => :environment do
        load(filename) if File.exist?(filename)
      end
    end
  end
end

This rakefile accepts the name of a seed file in the db/seeds directory (excluding the .rb extension), then runs it as it would run seeds.rb. You can execute the rake task by issuing the following from the command line:

rake db:seed:seed_file_name # Name of the file EXCLUDING the .rb extension