mongoose-seedr lets you seed your database with fake data.
In case when you need to insert data into a database that is linked to another data you can easily set references and it will automatically connect collections and populate database. This way, we don't have to manually link them together.

$ npm install mongoose-seedr --save-dev

// seedDatabase.js
const seedr = require('mongoose-seedr');
const path = require('path');

seedr.seed({
    databaseURL: 'mongodb://localhost:27017/seed-test',
    seed: [
        {
            documents: path.join(__dirname, 'users.js'),
            collection: 'users'
        },
        {
            documents: path.join(__dirname, 'pets.js'),
            collection: 'pets'
        }
    ]
});

Run script and voila, you seeded your database.

$ node seedDatabase.js

users.js and pets.js are JS files with fake data that will be inserted into database.

users.js

module.exports = [
    {
        firstName: 'Terrence',
        lastName: 'Hudnall',
        pets: [
            'ref:pets._id',
            'ref:pets._id'
        ]
    },
    {
        firstName: 'Jordan',
        lastName: 'Kelly',
        pets: [
            {
                size: 'ref:pets.size',
                name: 'ref:pets.name'
            }
        ]
    }
]

pets.js

module.exports = [
    {
        name: 'Nacho',
        size: 'small'
    },
    {
        name: 'Pepper',
        size: 'big'
    }
]

As we can see in the previous example, users.js file holds the list of users. An user have pets array that have references to documents in pets collection.
In this case, we're using ref: followed by collection name and property that we want to get from document in another collection. mongoose-seedr will pick random document from that collection and pull out property that you've specified.

Configuration object that you pass into the seed method:

• Danijel Vincijanović (Author) [[email protected]]