Laravel Seed Extender

A highly opinioned way to work with the laravel seeder.

Installation

Require the package using composer:

composer require touhidurabir/laravel-seed-extender

WHY ?

As mentioned, this is a highly opinioned way to work with seeder. We have popular Faker library and Model Factories to seed model table and that seems like the obious choice . But sometimes in production or even in the development purpose we need real life data to seed model table and for that purpose need seeder classes .

Now this package does not introduce any new mechanism of the seeding using the seeder classes but just add some ability to manupulate the each seeder class as per need . Basically it add some extar feature/ability to the seeder class.

Usage

To generate a new seeder class of this package, run the following command

php artisan make:extend-seeder SeederClassName --table=table_name

That will generate an seeder new seeder class at the /database/seeders location . for example , a basic user seeder class will look like this

namespace Database\Seeders;

use Touhidurabir\SeedExtender\BaseTableSeeder;

class UsersTableSeeder extends BaseTableSeeder {
    
    /**
     * Seeder table name 
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $table = "users";


    /**
     * The list of table attributes/columns
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $columns = ["id", "email", "password", "created_at", "updated_at", "deleted_at"];


    /**
     * The table attributes/columns that will be ignored during the seeding process
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $ignorables = [];


    /**
     * The table attributes/columns that will be used during the seeding process
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $useables = [];


    /**
     * Should merge and include timestamps[created_at, updated_at] by default into the seed data
     *
     * @var boolean
     */    
    protected $includeTimestampsOnSeeding = true;


    /**
     * The seeding data
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $data = [
    	
    ];


    /**
     * Build up the seedeable data set;
     *
     * @return array
     */
    protected function seedableDataBuilder() {

        foreach ($this->data as $key => $value) {
            
            $this->data[$key] = array_merge($value, [

            ]);
        }

        return $this->data;
    }
}

As the above example showes, there are few properties that can be modified manually or vai the command.

Class properties and methods explanation

$table (PROPERTY)

It define for which talbel it will run the seeder . to specify which table vai the command

php artisan make:extend-seeder UsersTableSeeder --table=users

$columns (PROPERTY)

It defined all the available columns in the table . nothing to do here as it will be auto generated by checking the table schema by this package itself .

$ignorables (PROPERTY)

It defined which columns will be ignored at the seed time . it specify which columns we want to ignore at the class generation time through the command, provide comma seperated columns name

php artisan make:extend-seeder UsersTableSeeder --table=users --ignorables=id,deleted_at

$useables (PROPERTY)

It defined which columns will be used at the seed time . it specify which columns we want to use at the class generation time through the command, provide comma seperated columns name

php artisan make:extend-seeder UsersTableSeeder --table=users --useables=name,email,password

NOTE that if the $useables property and defined and not empty, it will take account of it and ignore the set values of $ignorables property.

$includeTimestampsOnSeeding (PROPERTY)

This defined if the created_at and updated_at values will be auto included at the seed time. by default this is set to true . but if the model is not using the timestamp values or do not want to include it in the seding process, then specify it through the command at the time of generation

php artisan make:extend-seeder UsersTableSeeder --table=users --useables=name,email,password --no-timestamp

$data (PROPERTY)

This defined what data to seed . for example

protected $data = [
    ['[email protected]', '123456'],
    ['[email protected]', '123456'],
];

seedableDataBuilder (METHOD)

If we have some data that needed to be presetent to every seeding rows, then it's better to not to have the as repetitive data in the $data properties and define those in this method .

protected function seedableDataBuilder() {

    foreach ($this->data as $key => $value) {
        
        $this->data[$key] = array_merge($value, [
            // any repetitive merge data 
            // it will merge to every row data defined in the $data proeprties
        ]);
    }

    return $this->data;
}

More Command Options

replace

By default it will throw exception and print a error message in the console when a seeder class of same name already exists but if needed to replace it pass the flag --replace

php artisan make:extend-seeder UsersTableSeeder --table=users --replace

strict

By default this package will not try to validate the give informaitons like table name it useables or ignorables columns but if required to , it can validate those via passing the flag --strict .

php artisan make:extend-seeder UsersTableSeeder --table=users --useables=email,password --strict

Run seeding independent of seeder class

This package provides way to run a seeding process independent of seeder class . That is one can run a seeding process from within the app at the runtime .

use Touhidurabir\SeedExtender\Facades\SeedExtender;

SeedExtender::table('table_name') //table name
    ->useables([]) // useables columns as array
    ->ignorables([]) // ignorables columns as array
    ->includeTimestampsOnSeeding(true) // auto include of timestamp value as boolean
    ->seedData( // set seed data
        [ [], [], ], // the seed data itself
        [] // any auto mergeable repetitive data
    )
    ->run(); // run the seeding process

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

Please make sure to update tests as appropriate.

License

MIT