Data Seeding

What it does

This skill automatically generates synthetic data to populate databases, primarily for development, testing, and staging environments. It allows you to create realistic datasets by defining seed scripts that insert or update records in database tables. The skill supports generating small, predictable datasets for development, minimal data for testing, and larger, production-like datasets for staging. It also includes the option to use Faker.js for more realistic data generation.

When to use it

• Populating a new development environment: Quickly create a database with sample data for initial development work.
• Setting up test databases: Generate consistent, repeatable data for automated testing scenarios.
• Creating staging environments: Populate a staging database with realistic data that mimics production conditions.
• Augmenting existing datasets: Add synthetic records to expand the size of an existing dataset and improve model training accuracy (though this is not explicitly detailed in the source).

Key capabilities

• Seed Script Execution: Runs seed scripts located within packages/database/src/seed/.
• Table-Specific Seeding: Allows seeding individual tables, such as db:seed:cars.
• Faker.js Integration: Utilizes Faker.js to generate realistic data for fields like make, model, and month.
• Environment-Specific Seeds: Supports different seed configurations based on the environment (development, test, staging).
• Idempotent Seed Operations: Provides options for upserting data (insert or update) using onConflictDoUpdate.
• Database Clearing: Includes an optional function to clear existing database data before seeding.

Example prompts

Since this is a code-running skill, example prompts would be commands to execute:

• pnpm -F @sgcarstrends/database db:seed (Run all seed scripts)
• pnpm -F @sgcarstrends/database db:seed:cars (Seed only the 'cars' table)
• pnpm -F @sgcarstrends/database add -D @faker-js/faker (Install Faker.js dependency)

Tips & gotchas

• Dependency: Requires pnpm to be installed and configured correctly for execution.
• Environment Variables: The NODE_ENV environment variable determines which seed scripts are executed.
• Database Schema: The skill relies on a pre-existing database schema defined in packages/database/src/db/schema.