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The seed command populates your database with sample data for development and testing. This includes users, posts, comments, and upvotes with realistic content.

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Usage

oforum seed
The seed command automatically runs migrations before seeding. You don’t need to run oforum migrate first.

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What Gets Created

The seed command generates:

30 Users

Demo accounts with usernames like alice, bob, charlie, etc. All use password password123.

20 Posts

Tech-related posts with titles, descriptions, and external URLs covering topics like Go, PostgreSQL, Rust, and web development.

200 Comments

Realistic comment threads including nested replies (30% of comments are replies to other comments).

300 Upvotes

Distributed across posts (60%) and comments (40%) to simulate community engagement.

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Output

oforum seed
Output: 
⟳ Seeding database...

✓ 30 users created
✓ admin: alice
✓ 20 posts created
✓ 200 comments created
✓ 300 upvotes created

✓ Seed complete

Default login: alice / password123

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Default Admin Credentials

The first user created (alice) is automatically assigned admin privileges:
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Username
string
alice
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Password
string
password123
Use these credentials to:
  • Access the admin dashboard at /admin
  • Manage users, tags, and roles
  • Configure site settings
Never use the default credentials in production. Always create a secure admin account and change the password immediately.

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Sample Data

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Users

30 users with names: 
alice, bob, charlie, diana, eve, frank, grace, hank,
iris, jack, kate, leo, mia, noah, olivia, paul,
quinn, rose, sam, tara, uma, vic, wendy, xander,
yara, zane, alex, blake, casey, drew
All accounts:
  • Use password password123
  • Have random creation dates (up to 90 days in the past)
  • Can post, comment, and upvote immediately

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Posts

20 posts with realistic tech topics:
  • “Go 1.25 Released with Major Performance Improvements”
  • “SQLite is All You Need”
  • “Show: I built a terminal file manager in Rust”
  • “Ask: What’s your favorite underrated CLI tool?”
  • “Why I Stopped Using React”
  • And 15 more…
Each post includes:
  • Title and body text
  • External URL (for 70% of posts)
  • Random author from the 30 users
  • Creation timestamp (up to 72 days ago)
  • Unique slug for URL

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Comments

200 comments with varied tones:
  • “Great article, thanks for sharing.”
  • “This mirrors my experience exactly.”
  • “Worth noting that this doesn’t work well on Windows.”
  • “Bookmarked. Will try this over the weekend.”
  • And more…
30% of comments are replies to other comments, creating threaded discussions.

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Upvotes

300 upvotes distributed across:
  • 60% on posts
  • 40% on comments
Each user can only upvote a post or comment once (enforced by database constraints).

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When to Use Seed Data

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Local Development

Perfect for testing features without manually creating content: 
oforum seed
oforum serve
Visit http://localhost:8080 to see a populated forum.

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Staging Environment

Populate staging with realistic data: 
export DATABASE_URL="postgres://staging-db/oforum"
oforum seed

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Demo Instances

Create demo sites for showcasing oForum: 
oforum seed
# Share demo URL with test credentials

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Testing

Seed before running integration tests: 
oforum seed
npm test
Never run oforum seed in production. It will add demo data to your live forum.

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Seed Variants

The oForum repository includes additional seed scripts in the cmd/ directory for advanced use cases:

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seed-extra

Creates 1,000 posts for load testing: 
go run cmd/seed-extra/main.go
Generates:
  • 1,000 posts with procedurally generated titles
  • ~2,000 comments (2 per post)
  • ~3,000 upvotes (3 per post)
  • Uses existing users from oforum seed
Run oforum seed first to create the initial 30 users.

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seed-prod

Creates 5,000 posts for production-scale testing: 
go run cmd/seed-prod/main.go
Generates:
  • 50 users
  • 5,000 posts
  • ~10,000 comments
  • ~15,000 upvotes
  • Post tagging (40% of posts)
This generates significant data. Only use on test/staging databases with adequate resources.

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Idempotency

The seed command uses ON CONFLICT DO UPDATE for users, making it safe to run multiple times: 
INSERT INTO users (username, password_hash, created_at) 
VALUES ($1, $2, $3)
ON CONFLICT (username) DO UPDATE SET username = EXCLUDED.username
Posts and comments are always inserted as new rows. Running seed multiple times will:
  • Keep existing users (updating timestamps)
  • Add duplicate posts with different slugs
  • Add new comments and upvotes

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Resetting Data

To start fresh: 
-- Delete all data
TRUNCATE users, posts, comments, upvotes, sessions, tags, roles, post_tags, user_roles CASCADE;

-- Re-run migrations
DELETE FROM schema_migrations;
Then: 
oforum migrate
oforum seed

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Environment Variables

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DATABASE_URL
string
required
PostgreSQL connection string.
DATABASE_URL=postgres://localhost:5432/oforum?sslmode=disable

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Examples

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First-Time Setup

oforum init
oforum seed
Login at http://localhost:8080 with alice / password123.

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Reset and Reseed

psql -d oforum -c "TRUNCATE users CASCADE;"
oforum seed

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Seed Remote Database

DATABASE_URL="postgres://user:pass@remote-db/oforum" oforum seed

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