How to pass arguments to Laravel factories?

Question

I have a users table and a one-to-zero/one relation with a businesses table (users.user_id => businesses.user_id). On my users table I have a discriminator which tells me if the user is of type business and therefore I need to have details on the businesses table as well.

I want to create my Users with my factory which currently is working and then only create business details where the discriminator points to a business account.

I have three options in my mind:

1. Create from users factory and then using '->each()' do some checks on the discriminator and create a new business user using a the factory. However I cannot pass to the business factory the user_id that the user was assigned.
2. First create the users. Then in my Business seeder, retrieve all Users that match a 'business' discriminator. Then for all of these users run a factory that creates the business details. But again, I would have to link somehow the user_id of the already create user with the business factory user_id.
3. In my business factory, create a new User and retrieve the id, thus making the link between users.user_id and business.user_id. However I am using a random generator for user.user_type so even if I have the businesses table filled it might be for users that have the discriminator as 'personal'.

Is there another way? Can I pass arguments from my Seeder to the factory?

Solution 1

The attributes you pass to the create function will be passed into your model definition callback as the second argument.

---

In your case you don't even need to access those attributes, since they'll automatically be merged in:

$business = factory(App\Business::class)->create();

factory(App\User::class, 5)->create([
    'business_id' => $business->id,
]);

Adapt this to your needs.

Solution 2

My code for adding polymorphic 'Admin' users was:

// run model factory
factory(App\Admin::class, 3)->create()->each(function ($admin) {

    $admin->user()->save(

        // solved: https://laravel.com/docs/master/database-testing#using-factories (Overriding attributes)
        factory(App\User::class)->make([
              'userable_id' => $admin->id,
              'userable_type' => App\Admin::class
        ])
    );
});

Hope this helps.

Solution 3

Send attribute,

factory(App\User::class)->create(['businessId' => $businessId]);

Retrieve it,

$factory->define(App\User::class, function (Faker $faker, $businessInfo) {
    //$businessInfo['businessId']
});

Comments

[Cristian]

How could I have missed that. I watched the Laracast lesson and I know remember about setting stuff myself. Of course it was in the documentation as well: laravel.com/docs/master/testing#model-factories. Thanks a lot.

[Harry]

@Cristian's link looks outdated now, for 5.4 see laravel.com/docs/5.4/database-testing#using-factories & scroll down to 'Persisting Models'

[Lloric Mayuga Garcia]

what about like this? php $student->assignRole('student'); im using spatie/permission

[shotex]

what if i don't want to merge them? what if i want to use custom parameters to model factories?

[Joseph Silber]

@shotex - If you want custom parameters, why are you using factories? Just create the model yourself: User::create($attributes)

[Víctor]

@JosephSilber In my case I would want to pass a $user parameter so I can get its type and according to that, get a random value associated with it.

[PaulH]

Great, the manual puts it like this: You may override attributes on the model by passing an array to the create method. laravel.com/docs/5.8/database-testing#persisting-models

[George]

Hello Robin how can i use the variable inside the factory ? not directly override

[Robin Hood]

@George Then just use make() without the array of custom values for userable_id and userable_type.

[George]

i want the admin variable to be usable in the User factory, ex if( $admin->name == 'test'} do something

[Robin Hood]

Then you'll need to use the Admin class: $admin = new Admin(). 👈 Start there and see where it goes.

[vikrant]

is there a way to access the $admin->id inside user factory?

[Robin Hood]

@vikrant I believe $admin->id works within the Admin factory only. For the User factory, I think you have to hard-code the admin ID.

[mikoop]

make doesn't seem to save the record btw

[mikoop]

thanks this is great and help with my seeds