Seeding

Seeders fill your tables with data: the categories every copy of the site needs, or demo content for development. Where migrations create the structure, seeders add the rows.

Creating a seeder#

php flo make:seeder Categories

creates database/seeders/CategoriesSeeder.php (make:seeder CategoriesSeeder gives the same file):

<?php
declare(strict_types=1);

namespace Database\Seeders;

use FloCMS\CLI\Database\Seeder;
use FloCMS\Core\Database;

final class CategoriesSeeder extends Seeder
{
    public function run(Database $db): void
    {
        foreach (['News', 'Guides', 'Releases'] as $name) {
            $db->table('categories')->insert(['name' => $name]);
        }
    }
}

$db is the database connection, so the query builder and query() work as in a model. Seeders live in database/seeders/ with the namespace Database\Seeders.

Running seeders#

php flo db:seed                          # runs DatabaseSeeder
php flo db:seed --class=CategoriesSeeder # runs one seeder

On APP_ENV=production, db:seed asks before it runs; add --force in scripts.

Seeders also run after migrations with --seed:

php flo migrate --seed
php flo migrate:fresh --seed    # rebuild the database from scratch, then seed

The DatabaseSeeder#

php flo db:seed without --class runs Database\Seeders\DatabaseSeeder. New projects don't include one, so create it to list the seeders that make up a complete database:

php flo make:seeder Database

final class DatabaseSeeder extends Seeder
{
    public function run(Database $db): void
    {
        $this->call(CategoriesSeeder::class, PostsSeeder::class);
    }
}

call() runs other seeders in the order you list them.

Seeding safely#

A seeder runs every time you call it, so running it twice inserts its rows twice. Write seeders that can run again without harm, for example by checking first:

public function run(Database $db): void
{
    if ($db->table('categories')->count() > 0) {
        return;
    }

    // insert the categories
}