Laravel - Unit Testing with SoftDeletes - php

Question

I have a basic test which verifies that a user can only see its own posts.
In my test_database I whip up a couple posts, attach some of them to the user with the ModelFactory - which I then test that this user can only see the posts that are linked to the user according to the 'user_id' column in the post records. The test basically asserts that the output of a query is as expected.
I'm using the SoftDeletes trait in my Post model.
I have 'deleted_at' in the 'protected $dates' property on Post Model.
The problem is that the 'deleted_at' field is NOT returned in the factory()->create() output - but it IS present in the query where I fetch all the user's posts.
I was able to solve this by adding the 'deleted_at' field to the factory with value null, but it seems silly to me to have to add this field to every factory.
Why do I explicitly need to do this for 'deleted_at' but not for example for 'created_at' and 'updated_at'?
Code
Post schema
Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments('id');
$table->integer('company_id')->unsigned();
$table->integer('locale_id')->unsigned();
$table->string('name');
$table->text('description')->nullable();
$table->boolean('active')->default(false);
$table->datetime('start_date')->nullable()->default(null);
$table->datetime('end_date')->nullable()->default(null);
$table->softDeletes();
$table->timestamps();
});
Post factory
$factory->define(App\Post::class, function (Faker\Generator $faker) {
return [
'company_id' => function () {
return factory(App\Company::class)->create()->id;
},
'locale_id' => function () {
return factory(App\Locale::class)->create()->id;
},
'title' => $faker->sentence(rand(1,3)),
'body' => $faker->paragraph(1),
'active' => rand(0,1),
'start_date' => $faker->dateTimeBetween('now', '+2 years')->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
'end_date' => $faker->dateTimeBetween('+2 years', '+4 years')->format('Y-m-d H:i:s')
];
});
My unit test
public function test_scope_foruser_only_returns_posts_for_authenticated_user()
{
// Given there are 2 companies
$companies = factory(Company::class, 2)->create();
// With 1 post per company
$postX = factory(Post::class)->create(['company_id' => $companies->first()->id]);
$postY = factory(Post::class)->create(['company_id' => $companies->last()->id]);
// Given I am logged in as user of the first company
$user = factory(User::class)->create([
'typeable_type' => Company::class,
'typeable_id' => $companies->first()->id
]);
// Login
$this->be(User::first());
// When I fetch the posts for User (via company)
$posts = Post::forUser()->get()->toArray();
// Then It returns only posts which the user's company
// is associated with in a properly formatted array
$this->assertCount(1, $posts);
$this->assertEquals([$postX->toArray()], $posts);
}
This is the query scope applied to the Post model as seen above
public function scopeForUser($query)
{
if ($company = auth()->user()->company) {
return $query->where(['company_id' => $company->id]);
}
return $query;
}