Seeders

Introduction

Seeding lets you populate your database with test data for development. Each seeder is tied to a table and generates data using the Faker library.

Creating a seeder

php bow add:seeder users

A file will be created in the seeders/ directory with a timestamp:

seeders/20260309120000-users.php

<?php

use Faker\Factory as FakerFactory;

class Users20260309120000
{
  public function run()
  {
    $faker = FakerFactory::create();

    // Write the seeding here
  }

  /**
   * Return the list of depended seeder
   *
   * @return array
   */
  public function depends()
  {
    return [];
  }
}

Complete example

seeders/20260309120000-users.php

<?php

use App\Models\User;
use Faker\Factory as FakerFactory;

class Users20260309120000
{
  public function run()
  {
    $faker = FakerFactory::create();

    foreach (range(1, 50) as $i) {
      $user = User::create([
        'name' => $faker->name,
        'email' => $faker->unique()->safeEmail,
        'password' => app_hash('password'),
        'avatar' => $faker->imageUrl(200, 200, 'people'),
        'bio' => $faker->paragraph,
        'is_active' => $faker->boolean(80),
        'created_at' => $faker->dateTimeBetween('-1 year')->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
        'updated_at' => date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
      ]);
      $user->persist();
    }
  }

  public function depends()
  {
    return [];
  }
}

Dependencies between seeders

The depends() method lets you define the seeders that must run before this one:

seeders/20260309130000-posts.php

<?php

use App\Models\Post;
use App\Models\User;
use Faker\Factory as FakerFactory;

class Posts20260309130000
{
  public function run()
  {
    $faker = FakerFactory::create();

    // Get the IDs of the users that have already been seeded
    $userIds = User::all()->map(fn ($user) => $user->id)->toArray();

    foreach (range(1, 100) as $i) {
      $post = Post::create([
        'user_id' => $faker->randomElement($userIds),
        'title' => $faker->sentence,
        'slug' => $faker->slug,
        'content' => $faker->paragraphs(5, true),
        'published_at' => $faker->optional(0.7)->dateTimeBetween('-6 months')?->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
        'created_at' => date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
        'updated_at' => date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
      ]);
      $post->persist();
    }
  }

  public function depends()
  {
    return [
      Users20260309120000::class,
    ];
  }
}

Running seeders

A specific seeder

php bow seed:file Users20260309120000

All seeders

php bow seed:all

Reference data

For reference data (roles, statuses, etc.), use a dedicated seeder:

seeders/20260309100000-roles.php

<?php

use Bow\Database\Database;

class Roles20260309100000
{
  public function run()
  {
    $roles = [
      ['name' => 'admin', 'display_name' => 'Administrateur'],
      ['name' => 'moderator', 'display_name' => 'Modérateur'],
      ['name' => 'user', 'display_name' => 'Utilisateur'],
    ];

    foreach ($roles as $role) {
      Database::table('roles')->insert(array_merge($role, [
        'created_at' => date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
        'updated_at' => date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
      ]));
    }
  }

  public function depends()
  {
    return [];
  }
}

Useful Faker methods

Method	Description	Example
$faker->name	Full name	Jean Dupont
$faker->email	Email	jean@example.com
$faker->unique()->email	Unique email	-
$faker->safeEmail	Test email	user@example.org
$faker->password	Password	a3$kLm9x
$faker->phoneNumber	Phone number	+33 6 12 34 56 78
$faker->address	Full address	-
$faker->city	City	Paris
$faker->country	Country	France
$faker->text(200)	Text (200 chars)	-
$faker->paragraph	Paragraph	-
$faker->sentence	Sentence	-
$faker->boolean(70)	Boolean (70% true)	true/false
$faker->numberBetween(1, 100)	Number	42
$faker->randomFloat(2, 0, 1000)	Decimal	123.45
$faker->dateTimeBetween('-1 year')	Date	DateTime
$faker->optional(0.8)->name	Nullable (80%)	Jean or null
$faker->randomElement(['a', 'b'])	Random choice	a
$faker->imageUrl(200, 200)	Image URL	https://...
$faker->uuid	UUID	550e8400-...
$faker->slug	Slug	mon-article

Localization

Use FakerFactory::create('fr_FR') for data in French.

Is something missing?

If you run into problems with the documentation or have suggestions to improve the documentation or the project in general, please open an issue for us, or send a tweet mentioning the Twitter account @bowframework or directly on github.