Seeding a Triplit Database

In this guide, we'll walk through how to use triplit seed to seed a database.

Creating a seed file

First, we'll need to create a seed file. This is a file that contains the data we want to seed the database with. We'll use the triplit seed command to this file.

triplit seed create my-first-seed

This will create a file called my-first-seed.ts in the triplit/seeds directory. It will instrospect your schema defined in ./triplit/schema.ts. It will use the schema to provide some initial type hinting to help ensure that the data in your seed adheres to the schema.

For example, a schema file might look like this:

import { Schema as S, ClientSchema } from '@triplit/client';
 
export const schema = {
  todos: {
    schema: S.Schema({
      id: S.Id(),
      text: S.String(),
      completed: S.Boolean({ default: false }),
      created_at: S.Date({ default: S.Default.now() }),
    }),
  },
  profiles: {
    schema: S.Schema({
      id: S.Id(),
      name: S.String(),
      created_at: S.Date({ default: S.Default.now() }),
    }),
  },
} satisfies ClientSchema;

And would result in a seed file that looks like this:

import { BulkInsert } from '@triplit/client';
import { schema } from '../schema.js';
export default function seed(): BulkInsert<typeof schema> {
  return {
    todos: [],
    profiles: [],
  };
}

Editing the seed file

Now that we have scaffolded a seed file, we can start adding data to it. Let's add a few todos:

import { BulkInsert } from '@triplit/client';
import { schema } from '../schema.js';
export default function seed(): BulkInsert<typeof schema> {
  return {
    todos: [
      {
        text: 'Buy milk',
      },
      {
        text: 'Buy eggs',
      },
      {
        text: 'Buy bread',
      },
    ],
    profiles: [
      {
        name: 'Cole Cooper',
      },
    ],
  };
}

You can add whatever scripts you want to this file, including external libraries, as long as it exports a default function that adheres to the BulkInsert type (a record with collection names as keys and arrays of entities as values).

Using the seed file

Now that we have a seed file, we can use the triplit seed run command to seed the database. First, make sure that your environment variables are set up correctly, with TRIPLIT_DB_URL pointing to your database (be it a local dev server or a Triplit Cloud instance) and TRIPLIT_SERVICE_TOKEN set to a valid service token.

Then, run the triplit seed create command with the name of the seed file as an argument:

triplit seed run my-first-seed

You should see some output

> Running seed file: my-first-seed.ts
> Successfully seeded with my-seed.ts
> Inserted 3 document(s) into todos
> Inserted 1 document(s) into users

triplit seed variants

create

You can use the --create option to create a seed file with some helpful typescript. This will introspect your schema and provide some initial type hinting to help ensure that the data in your seed adheres to the schema.

triplit seed create my-first-seed

--all

You can define multiple seed files in the triplit/seeds directory. You can run them all at once by using the --all option.

triplit seed run --all

--file

You can also run a specific seed file, not necessarily located in triplit/seeds/[seed-file].ts by using the --file option.

triplit seed run path/to/my-seed.ts