unique() is pretty easy to understand: a global repository of already-generated data, guaranteed not to be repeated. In our application, we have ~400 factories, and about 1k instances of unique() corresponding to database constraint and about 800 unit tests. We easily surpass the 10k limit and even when upping to 100k. It would be immensely helpful to be able to pass a key: unique('table.column')->whatever(). In addition, would be good to have a clear() method when we refresh the database.

protected function _after()
{
    Faker::unique()->clear();
}

If agreed, I can spin up a PR.

when I require the package with composer I figure out that the faker dependency still on 1.4, how I can get 1.5? because I need the Arabic support from faker 1.5 to to generate data!!

I really like FactoryMuffin 3.0. In my opinion a lot of good design decisions were made for the upcoming version.

What's a show stopper for me at the moment though is very limited compatibility with Faker through the facade. Especially bothering at the current point is one thing. If I'm using Faker directly I can concatenate generated string. So this would work

$fm->define('Model')->setDefinitions(array(
    'someValue' => $faker->firstName() . ' ' . $faker->randomNumber()
));

Using the facade I get an exception, because the returned closure can not be casted to a string.

$fm->define('Model')->setDefinitions(array(
    'someValue' => Faker::firstName() . ' ' . Faker::randomNumber()
));

That's why I'm wondering, why is a closure returned in Faker.php in line 121 (format() method). Why is the result not directly returned like so:

/**
     * Wrap a faker format in a closure.
     *
     * @param string $formatter The formatter.
     * @param array  $arguments The arguments.
     *
     * @return \Closure
     */
    public function format($formatter, array $arguments = [])
    {
        return $this->getGenerator()->format( $formatter, $arguments );
    }

This would already resolve the issue but I guess there would be other drawbacks?

Hi!

I'm using this package extensively, but the faker version used is getting quite old, almost two years, missing some of the features, but i'm using faker directly also, and get locked on the 1.6 version. I had seen the previous pull request #11 closed and I understand the causes. Maybe you could consider updating a major version to catch up with Faker?

Thanks

Trying to use this library with the latest version of the faker library (v1.7.1) throws a composer error;

factory-muffin-maker currently requires 1.6.*; changed this to ^1.6

I would be nice if we could have some DocBlocks like @property or @method, along the line of https://github.com/fzaninotto/Faker/blob/master/src/Faker/Generator.php#L6-L174

A few minutes ago I wanted to extend my own Faker instance from factory-muffins Faker to add a phpdoc tags for Faker instance API autocompletion

But I loosed this ability due to private access modifier on Facade::$instance

Additionally I don't see a valuable reason to leave it private on

Added a simple use case to let people know how to implement the Faker facade. I create this pull request because I found no documentation about factory-muffin-faker and the only way I found to use it is within the factory-muffin documentation.