Reset the database (purge all), then seed a database

I use rake db:reset which drops and then recreates the database and includes your seeds.rb file. http://guides.rubyonrails.org/migrations.html#resetting-the-database

You can delete everything and recreate database + seeds with both:

1. rake db:reset: loads from schema.rb
2. rake db:drop db:create db:migrate db:seed: loads from migrations

Make sure you have no connections to db (rails server, sql client..) or the db won't drop.

schema.rb is a snapshot of the current state of your database generated by:

rake db:schema:dump

As of Rails 5, the rake commandline tool has been aliased as rails so now

rails db:reset instead of rake db:reset

will work just as well