the convention for persisting fake data to the database

Question

I want to create a bunch of fake data for my app for testing, I read this stackoverflow answer and it seems that factories are what people use for fake data.

I read through the Laravel docs and it seems that seeders have a built in artisan command to seed the Database, while factories don't. for factories I either have to:

1. add User::factory()->create(); somewhere in my codebase to persist fake data in the DB and later remove it
2. manually create an artisan command that runs User::factory()->create(); under the hood

both seem to me like something the Laravel community won't settle for, so I am here asking what the solution is and if in my case I should switch to a seeder.

Answer 1

To fill the database with test data, seeding is used.

php artisan db:seed
OR
php artisan db:seed --class=ClassName

But to generate your test data you need factories that are related to your models.

To generate a new factory, use the make:factory Artisan command:

php artisan make:factory UserFactory

This command will place the new factory class in the database/factories directory of your application and specify the path to the model

namespace Database\Factories;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\Factory;
use Illuminate\Support\Str;

class UserFactory extends Factory
{
    protected $model = User::class;

    /**
     * Define the default state of the model.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function definition()
    {
        return [
            'name' => $this->faker->name(),
            'email' => $this->faker->unique()->safeEmail(),
            'email_verified_at' => now(),
            'password' => '$2y$10$92IXUNpkjO0rOQ5byMi.Ye4oKoEa3Ro9llC/.og/at2.uheWG/igi', // password
            'remember_token' => Str::random(10),
        ];
    }
}

Once you have defined your factories, you can use the static factory method provided to your models by the Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory trait to create a factory instance for that model.

class User extends Model
{
   use HasFactory;
}

The factory method of the HasFactory trait will use conventions to determine the appropriate factory for the model. Specifically, the method will look for a factory in the Database\Factories namespace whose class name matches the model name and has the Factory suffix.

Seeder + Factory

class DatabaseSeeder extends Seeder
{

   public function run()
   {
        User::factory()->create();
        
        // Override attributes
        $user = User::factory()->create([
           'name' => 'Abigail',
        ]);
   }
}