Laravel After Seeders

This library adds seeder functionality with versioning support for Laravel, making it ideal for a production environment. Seeders are stored in the database/after_seeders directory in JSON format. The execution progress of each seeder is tracked in the after_seeders table, ensuring that each seeder is only seed once.

Install

Install the package via Composer:

composer require davidvandertuijn/laravel-after-seeders

Run the migrations:

php artisan migrate

Publish the configuration file:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Davidvandertuijn\LaravelAfterSeeders\ServiceProvider"

Usage

Create a New Seeder Automatically

Use the command below to create a complete seeder based on existing records in a database table.

php artisan after-seeders:make my_table

The command will prompt you to include or exclude specific columns from the table. If you skip a column, it won’t be included in the seeder file. You can also define a range of record IDs to include.

Example prompt:

Columns for table "my_table".
Would you like to add the column "id" ? (yes/no) [no]: y
Would you like to add the column "name" ? (yes/no) [no]: y
Would you like to add the column "dateofbirth" ? (yes/no) [no]:
Select range for table "my_table".
Enter the starting ID [0]: 12
Enter the ending ID [13]: 13

After completion, you’ll get the following message:

database/after_seeders/YYYY_MM_DD_XXXXXX_my_table.json ... DONE

And the seeder will look like this:

{
    "RECORDS": [
        {
            "id": 12,
            "name": "John Doe"
        },
        {
            "id": 13,
            "name": "Jane Doe"
        }
    ]
}

Create a New Seeder Manually

Use the following command to create an empty “after seeder” file. This option is ideal if you’re already familiar with the JSON structure and prefer to manually input the data.

php artisan after-seeders:placeholder my_table

You’ll see the following output upon success:

database/after_seeders/YYYY_MM_DD_XXXXXX_my_table.json ... DONE

A basic structure for the JSON file will look like this:

{
    "RECORDS": [
        {
            "name": "Example"
        }
    ]
}

If you use Navicat for MySQL, it follows the same format when exporting data to a .json file.

Running Seeders

To execute pending “after seeders,” run the following command:

php artisan after-seeders:seed

The command checks whether the specified table and columns exist. If not, the seeder will be skipped.

After completion, you’ll get the following message:

Run batch "X".
database/after_seeders/YYYY_MM_DD_XXXXXX_my_table.json ... 1.23ms DONE

---

Handling created_at

If the table has a created_at column and it’s missing from the seeder, the current timestamp will be automatically inserted.

Update Or Insert

If the seeder contains an id column, the updateOrInsert method will be used. Otherwise, the insert method will be applied.

Tags

You can use tags to organize and manage your seeders more effectively. By adding a tag, you can group seeders and seed specific groups when needed.

Create a Seeder with a Tag

To generate a seeder based on existing records and assign a tag, use the --tag option:

php artisan after-seeders:make my_table --tag=my_tag

Similarly, you can create an empty seeder and assign a tag:

php artisan after-seeders:placeholder my_table --tag=my_tag

Running Seeders by Tag

When running seeders, you can specify a tag to seed only the seeders that belong to that group:

php artisan after-seeders:seed --tag=my_tag

This allows you to selectively execute seeders based on tags, making it easier to control which seeders are applied in different environments or scenarios.

Deployment

When deploying your application, you can execute seeders with specific tags using the deployment command. Before doing this, you’ll need to define the tags in your project’s configuration file located at config/after_seeders.php.

'tags' => [
    ...
],

To run the seeders during deployment, simply use the following command:

php artisan after-seeders:deploy