This package will provide a new way to use factories in Laravel. Instead of using factory files, you can now generate dedicated factory classes.

There are three benefits:

• You have a dedicated class for every factory, and the test data can be defined inside. This is a much cleaner solution than the default factory files.
• If creating test data gets more complicated than creating just one model, you hide this inside the factory class so that your tests stay clean.
• The generated factory classes use return types so that your IDE know what gets returned. (This is something you do not have with the default factory handling of Laravel.)

I already know a lot of people using factory classes. So why not just create your own classes when you need them?

• Automate everything! Even just calling an artisan command that creates a class is much faster than you doing it yourself.
• This package will create classes that already provide factory features, you know, like creating a new model instance or multiple ones.

You can install the package via composer:

composer require christophrumpel/laravel-factories-reloaded

To publish the config file run:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Christophrumpel\LaravelFactoriesReloaded\LaravelFactoriesReloadedServiceProvider"

It will provide the package's config file where you can define the path of your models, the path of the generated factories, as well as the generated factories namespace.

<?php

/*
 * You can place your custom package configuration in here.
 */
return [
    'models_path' => base_path('app'),

    'factories_path' => base_path('tests/Factories'),

    'factories_namespace' => 'Tests\Factories',
];

First, you need to create a new factory class. This is done via a new command this package comes with. In this example, we want to create a new user factory.

php artisan make:factory-reloaded

After running this command, you have to select one of your models. Here you decide for which model you are creating a factory for. I will choose the user model. (Through a config you can define where your models live)

This will give you a new UserFactory under the Tests\Factories namespace. Here is your new basic factory class:

class UserFactory extends BaseFactory
{

    protected string $modelClass = User::class;

    public function create(array $extra = []): User
    {
        return parent::build($extra);
    }
    
    public function make(array $extra = []): User
    {
        return parent::build($extra, 'make');
    }

    public function getData(Generator $faker): array
    {
        return [];
    }

}

Inside this class, you can define the properties of the model with the getData method. It is very similar to what you would do with a Laravel default factory, and you can make use of Faker as well. The create method is only a copy of the one in the parent class BaseFactory. Still, we need it in our dedicated factory class so that we can define what gets returned. In our case, it is a user model. Other methods like new or times are hidden in the parent class.

Now you can start using your new user factory class in your tests. The static new method gives you a new instance of the factory. This is useful to chain other methods, like create for example.

$user = UserFactory::new()->create();

This will give you back a newly created user instance from the database. If you want to create multiple instances, you can use the times method, which will use the create method behind the scenes and will return you a collection of the new model instances.

$user = UserFactory::new()
    ->times(4)
    ->create();

Like with Laravel factories you can also make a new model which gets not stored to the database yet.

$user = UserFactory::new()->make();

There will be situations when you need to add related models to your test data. This is already pretty easy with using multiple factory classes.

$user = UserFactory::new()->create();
$user->recipes()->saveMany(RecipeFactory::new()->times(4)->create());

Of course, the relations need to be set up before. Besides this, there is also an in-built solution.

$user = UserFactory::new()
    ->with(Recipe::class, 'recipes')
    ->create();

With the with method, you can easily add relations in a more fluently way. The first parameter defines the mode and the second one the name of the relationship. If you need to add more than one related model, you can add a third argument to define the count.

$user = UserFactory::new()
    ->with(Recipe::class, 'recipes', 4)
    ->create();

⚠️ Note: For this to work, you need to have created a RecipeFactory before.

But there is one more way to add related data. Since you own your factory classes, you can add a method on the class itself. This way you can pick a much more expressive name like withRecipes.

$user = UserFactory::new()
    ->withRecipes(4)
    ->create();

This way you can define yourself how to set up recipes and you are more flexible doing it. Here is an example of how your UserFactory could look like with a custom relation method.

class UserFactory extends BaseFactory
{

    protected string $modelClass = User::class;

    /** @var Collection */
    private $recipes;

    public function create(array $extra = []): User
    {
        $user = parent::build($extra);

        if ($this->recipes) {
            $user->recipes()->saveMany($this->recipes);
        }

        return $user;
    }

    public function withRecipes(int $times = 1)
    {
        $this->recipes = RecipeFactory::new()
            ->times($times)->make();

        return $this;
    }

    public function getData(Generator $faker): array
    {
        return [
            'name' => $faker->name,
            'email' => '[email protected]',
            'password' => bcrypt('test'),
        ];
    }

}

composer test

Please see CHANGELOG for more information about what has changed recently.

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.

If you discover any security-related issues, please email [email protected] instead of using the issue tracker.

• Christoph Rumpel
• All Contributors

The current implementation was improved with help from Brent's article about how they deal with factories at Spatie.

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.

This package was generated using the Laravel Package Boilerplate.