Rails fixtures — Incrementing an ID attribute automatically?

Question

I have a fixtures file with ID's like this:

post_one:
  id: 1
  attr2: 'some_value'

post_two:
  id: 2
  attr3: 'some_other_value'

and so on.

Is there a way I could not have to type in the id's for each record, and have it be incremented automatically?

Answer 1

If you don't specify an id, it will hash the label and use that as the id. Some benefits of not specifying an id:

• Stable, autogenerated IDs
• Label references for associations (belongs_to, has_one, has_many)
• HABTM associations as inline lists
• Autofilled timestamp columns
• Fixture label interpolation
• Support for YAML defaults

See this page in the documentation for more info on fixtures: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/FixtureSet.html