Seed my database, or insert data programatically in ApostropheCMS

Question

I'm wanting to do a very quick and dirty "seed" of my database with a load of blog posts... I'm happy working with Mongo cursors etc, but can't seem to find a valid lifecycle method to "plonk" this code into... This is all for a proof of concept, so it doesn't need to be perfect!

Could someone point me in the right direction? I can't seem to access the req inside a construct method, so can't self.insert there...

Why the downvotes? It's solid question on Apostrophe that others might value the answer to. — Tom Boutell, Mar 06 '18 at 16:14
@TomBoutell I'm wondering if the down vote was because the topic isn't in the form of a question? I don't have the SO juice to edit this, but maybe you do? — Bob., Mar 06 '18 at 18:39

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 06 '18 at 16:19

Check out the apostrophe-tasks module. This allows you to easily add a command line task in your own module, and to easily obtain a req object with full admin privileges to do this kind of work.

Your module can call self.apos.tasks.add from within construct:

self.apos.tasks.add(self.__meta.name, 'insert-stuff', function(apos, argv, callback) {
  var req = self.apos.tasks.getReq();
  return self.find(req, { cool: true }).toArray().then(function(err, pieces) {
    if (err) {
      return callback(err);
    }
    // etc., do things with `pieces`, then invoke callback(null);
  });
};

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 09 '18 at 12:33

Following on from @Tom Boutell's response, here is my final working code...

    construct: function(self, options) {
      self.apos.tasks.add(self.__meta.name, 'insert-blog-articles', function(apos, argv, callback) {
        console.info(`Running ${self.__meta.name}:insert-blog-articles`)

        if(!argv.create) throw new Error('Please pass a number of articles to create using --create=n')

        const req = self.apos.tasks.getReq()
        const numberToCreate = Array.from(Array(argv.create).keys())

        numberToCreate.forEach(item => {
          let blogPost = self.newInstance()

          blogPost = Object.assign({}, blogPost, {
            title: 'Post about cats!',
            image: 'https://www.vetbabble.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/hiding-cat.jpg',
            published: true,
            testData: true
          })

          self.insert(req, blogPost)
            .then(result => { console.info('Inserted doc!', result) })
          })
        })

        self.apos.tasks.add(self.__meta.name, 'show-hide-articles', function(apos, argv, callback) {
          console.info('Running task show-hide-articles', argv)

          const set = argv.show ? { published: true } : { published: false }

          self.apos.docs.db.update(
            { type: 'apostrophe-blog', testData: true },
            { $set: set },
            { multi: true }
          )
          .then(result => {
            argv.show && console.info('Docs updated, now showing posts')
            !argv.show && console.info('Docs updated, now hiding posts')
          })
          .catch(error => { console.warn('Error updating docs', error) })
        })
    }

Which (crudely) gives me two tasks:

node app apostrophe-blog:insert-blog-articles --create=100 --> create me 100 blog articles

node app apostrophe-blog:show-hide-articles --show --> Set those articles published flag to true or false, depending on the arg

Thanks for sharing the code. You can get this code to exit properly when it's finished if you use bluebird promises: — Tom Boutell, Mar 17 '18 at 13:39

Seed my database, or insert data programatically in ApostropheCMS

2 Answers2