Automatically Create Model Factories

July 19, 2016 / Eric L. Barnes

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:

php 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:

Schema::create('users', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->increments('id');
    $table->string('name');
    $table->string('username');
    $table->string('email')->unique();
    $table->string('password', 60);
    $table->rememberToken();
    $table->timestamps();
});

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

$factory->define(App\User::class, function (Faker\Generator $faker) {
    return [
        'name' =>  $faker->name ,
        'username' =>  $faker->userName ,
        'email' =>  $faker->safeEmail ,
        'password' =>  bcrypt($faker->password) ,
        'remember_token' =>  str_random(10) ,
    ];
});

You can find more information on Github.

Filed in: Laravel Packages / Model Factories