I needed to do some importing. CSV is the easiest format to work with for import data. Also if you didn’t know you can sometimes save your xls as a CSV for faster/easier access without additional gems.

Its built right into ruby you just need to require it.

require 'csv'

CSV.foreach(filename) do |row|
  Place.create({name: row[0], location: row[1], country: row[2]})
end

If you have columns headers in the file and they match the attribute names, you can do this slick method

CSV.foreach(filename, headers: true) do |row|
  Place.create(row.to_hash)
end

Related External Links:

• Stack Overflow - uby-on-rails-import-data-from-a-csv-file