Laravel 5.1 foreign keys in model factory

Question

How do you define foreign keys in a model factory. For example if I have a organisations table which has a foreign key to the countries table, in my model factory I'm having to define a dummy value for the country id as follows:

$factory->define(App\Organisation::class, function ($faker) {
   return [
      'name' => $faker->company,
      'country_id' => 197,
   ];
});

In my organisations table seeder class I am doing the following but the faker object isn't present - do I need to create a new faker object in my seeder class?

use Illuminate\Database\Seeder;

class OrganisationsTableSeeder extends Seeder
{

   public function run()
   {
      $countryIds = Country::lists('id')->all();

      factory('App\Organisation', 3)->create([
        // override factory default
        'country_id' => $faker->randomElement[$countryIds],
    ]);
   }
}

Database seeder class

class DatabaseSeeder extends Seeder
{
     public function run()
     {

        Model::unguard();

        $this->call('CountriesTableSeeder');
        $this->call('OrganisationsTableSeeder');

        Model::reguard();
     }
}

Whats the best way to define the foreign keys when defining model factories? Is it possible to omit the country_id from the model factory and add it in the seeder class instead - from the documention it seems you can only override an existing value defined in the model factory but you cant add a new value via the seeder class - correct me if i'm wrong?

Counterstroke

Answer 1

I may be a bit late on this one but I was having the same issue, this fixed it for me. You should be able to do

$factory->define(App\Organisation::class, function ($faker) {
    return [
      'name' => $faker->company,
      'country_id' => factory(App\Country::class)->create()->id,
    ];
});

and then in your seed you just need to call

factory(App\Organisation::class, 5)->create();

and it will create the countries for you as well.

Activity

The problem with this solution is that each organization will have one different country and it will never use an existing one, right? – Davison

mmmmh, it's been a while since I wrote this code, but your observation seems correct, although I didn't really care about using an existing country at the time I wrote it. – Activity

Answer 2

The way that the Laravel team, Otwell, Stauffer et.al., suggest is like this.

Testing > Adding Relations To Models

Adding relationships to your models

ModelFactory.php

$factory->define(App\Organisation::class, function ($faker) {
   return [
      'name' => $faker->company,
      'country_id' => 197,
   ];
});

$factory->define(App\Country::class, function ($faker) {
   return [
      'name' => $faker->country,
   ];
});

seeder

$organisations = factory('App\Organisation', 3)
  ->create()
  ->each(function($$organisation) {
      $organisation->relatedItems()->save(factory('App\Country')->make());
  });

Lucrece