Usage - Generators

Generic

The generic generator will be the generator you use the most. It will communicate with the faker library in order to generate your attribute.

Example 1

There is a simple example of setting a few different attributes.

League\FactoryMuffin\Facade::define('MyModel', array(
    'foo'    => 'word',          // Set the foo attribute to a random word
    'name'   => 'firstNameMale', // Set the name attribute to a random male first name
    'email'  => 'email',         // Set the email attribute to a random email address
    'body'   => 'text',          // Set the body attribute to a random string of text
    'slogan' => 'sentence',      // Set the slogan attribute to a random sentence
));

Example 2

This will set the age attribute to a random number between 20 and 40. Note how we're using the ; here to pass multiple arguments to the faker method.

League\FactoryMuffin\Facade::define('MyModel', array(
    'age' => 'numberBetween|20;40',
));

Example 3

This will set the name attribute to a random female first name. It will ensure that it is unique between all your generated models.

League\FactoryMuffin\Facade::define('MyModel', array(
    'name' => 'unique:firstNameFemale',
));

Example 4

This will set the profile_pic attribute to a random image url of dimensions 400 by 400. Because we've added the optional flag at the start, not all the generated models will have an image url set; sometimes we will return null.

League\FactoryMuffin\Facade::define('MyModel', array(
    'profile_pic' => 'optional:imageUrl|400;400',
));

More

Check out the faker library itself to see all the available methods. There are far too many to cover in the documentation here, and far too many for them to cover in their documentation too. Note that you may access the underlying faker instance using the getFaker method.

Factory

The factory generator can be useful for setting up relationships between models. The factory generator will return the model id of the model you ask it to generate.

Example 1

When we create a Foo object, we will find that the Bar object will been generated and saved too, and it's id will be assigned to the bar_id attribute of the Foo model.

League\FactoryMuffin\Facade::define('Foo', array(
    'bar_id' => 'factory|Bar'
));

League\FactoryMuffin\Facade::define('Bar', array(
    'baz' => 'date|Y-m-d'
));

Call

The call generator allows you to generate attributes by calling static methods on your models.

Example 1

This will set the foo attribute to whatever calling MyModel::exampleMethod() returns.

League\FactoryMuffin\Facade::define('MyModel', array(
    'foo' => 'call|exampleMethod',
));

Example 2

This will set the bar attribute to whatever calling MyModel::anotherMethod('hello') returns.

League\FactoryMuffin\Facade::define('MyModel', array(
    'bar' => 'call|anotherMethod|hello',
));

Example 3

This will set the baz attribute to whatever calling the exampleMethod method on the OtherModel after we generate and save it.

League\FactoryMuffin\Facade::define('MyModel', array(
    'baz' => 'call|exampleMethod|factory|OtherModel',
));

League\FactoryMuffin\Facade::define('OtherModel', array(
    'example' => 'boolean',
));

Closure

The closure generator can be used if you want a more custom solution. Whatever you return from the closure you write will be set as the attribute. Note that we pass an instance of your model as the first parameter of the closure to give you even more flexibility to modify it as you wish. We additionally pass a boolean as the second parameter that will be true if the model is being persisted to the database (the create function was used), and false if it's not being persisted (the instance function was used). We're using the isPendingOrSaved function under the hood here.

Example 1

As you can see from this example, the ability to use a closure to generate attributes can be so useful and flexible. Here we use it to generate a slug based on the initially randomly generated 5 word long title.

League\FactoryMuffin\Facade::define('MyModel', array(
    'title' => 'sentence|5',
    'slug' => function ($object, $saved) {
        $slug = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9\/_|+ -]/", '', $object->title);
        $slug = strtolower(trim($slug, '-'));
        $slug = preg_replace("/[\/_|+ -]+/", '-', $slug);

        return $slug;
    },
));