How to seed multiple relationships in Laravel with Faker - php

Question

I have a database with two columns, brands and shops. Each brand can owe several shops, and I want to seed my database via Fakers using Laravel.
So after setting up the migrations and the relationships in the models
<?php
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class Brand extends Model
{
/**
* Get the shops for the brand.
*/
public function shops()
{
return $this->hasMany('App\Shop','sh_brand_id');
}
}
And:
<?php
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class Shop extends Model
{
public function user() {
return $this->belongsTo('App\Brand','sh_brand_id');
}
}
I want to use a Factory to seed the database.
<?php
use Faker\Generator as Faker;
$factory->define(App\Shop::class, function (Faker $faker) {
return [
'name' => $faker->company,
'address' => $faker->address,
];
});
And
use Faker\Generator as Faker;
$factory->define(App\Brand::class, function (Faker $faker) {
return [
'name' => $faker->company,
'logo_url' => $faker->imageUrl(640, 480),
'website' => $faker->url,
'description' => $faker->text(500),
'telephone_number' =>'31'. $faker->randomNumber(8),
'principal_address' => $faker->address,
'email' => $faker->unique()->safeEmail,
];
});
And finally I need to seed the database using those Factories. There are documentation in the website and many examples for do it, but each solution I've found let me generate only one shop for each brand, and I want to generate many shops for each brands.
What is the best way to do this?

Answer 1

Put it directly in your factory. I use a helper method getInstanceOf to pick a random instance of another model.
use Faker\Generator as Faker;
use App\Brand;
use App\Shop;
function getInstanceOf($class, $returnIdOnly = true) {
$instance = $class::inRandomOrder()->first() ?? factory($class)->create();
return $returnIdOnly ? $instance->id : $instance;
}
$factory->define(Shop::class, function (Faker $faker) {
return [
'name' => $faker->company,
'address' => $faker->address,
'sh_brand_id' => getInstanceOf(Brand::class)
];
});
Then when seeding,
factory(App\Brand::class, 10);
factory(App\Shop::class, 50);

Answer 2

I've found this workaround that works for me:
<?php
use Illuminate\Database\Seeder;
class DatabaseSeeder extends Seeder {
/**
* Run the database seeds.
*
* #return void
*/
public function run() {
factory(App\Brand::class, 50)->create()
->each(
function ($br) {
factory(App\Shop::class, 10)->create()
->each(
function($sh) use (&$br) {
$br->shops()->save($sh)->make();
}
);
}
);
}
}