Automatically Create Model Factories

Laravel Test Factory Generator is a new package by Marcel Pociot that generates model factories from your existing models and database structure.

Once installed it gives you a new Artisan command to generate the model factories:

1php artisan test-factory-helper:generate

This command will then look through all your models, create test factories, and save them in your database/factories/ModelFactory.php file.

To prevent overwriting any of your existing factories, the command will append new ones and not modify any existing. It does include a --reset flag that will rewrite the entire ModelFactory file.

As an example if you have the following migration:

1Schema::create('users', function (Blueprint $table) {
2    $table->increments('id');
3    $table->string('name');
4    $table->string('username');
5    $table->string('email')->unique();
6    $table->string('password', 60);
7    $table->rememberToken();
8    $table->timestamps();
9});

Once you run the command this will be appended to your ModelFactory.php file:

1$factory->define(App\User::class, function (Faker\Generator $faker) {
2    return [
3        'name' =>  $faker->name ,
4        'username' =>  $faker->userName ,
5        'email' =>  $faker->safeEmail ,
6        'password' =>  bcrypt($faker->password) ,
7        'remember_token' =>  str_random(10) ,
8    ];
9});