Laravel JSON Seeder

Create and use JSON files to seed your database in your Laravel applications.

This package works both ways!

• Export your database into JSON files
• Use JSON files to seed your database

Installation

Require this package with composer. It is recommended to only require the package for development.

composer require timokoerber/laravel-json-seeder --dev

Next you need to publish the config file and register the required commands with ...

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="TimoKoerber\LaravelJsonSeeder\JsonSeederServiceProvider"

This will create the file config/jsonseeder.php where you can find the configurations.

Next add the JsonSeederServiceProvider to the providers array in config/app.php ...

// config/app.php

'providers' => [
    ...
    
    TimoKoerber\LaravelJsonSeeder\JsonSeederServiceProvider::class,
    
    ...
]

Creating JSON seeds from database

Of course you can create the JSON files manually. But if you already have a good development database, you can easily export it into JSON seeds.

You can create seeds for every table in your database by calling ...

php artisan jsonseeds:create

This will create one JSON file for watch table in your database (i.e. table users -> users.json, table posts -> posts.json, etc.).

If you only want to create a seed of one specific table (i.e. users), call ...

php artisan jsonseeds:create users

Existing files won't be overwritten by default. If you call the command again, a sub-directory will be created and the JSON seeds will be stored there. If you want to overwrite the existing seeds, use the overwrite option like ...

php artisan jsonseeds:create users -o|--overwrite

or just use the command ...

php artisan jsonseeds:overwrite users

Seeding

Go to your databas/seeds/DatabaseSeeder.php and add the JsonSeeder inside the run() method like this ...

// database/seeds/DatabaseSeeder.php

class DatabaseSeeder extends Seeder
{
    public function run()
    {
        $this->call(TimoKoerber\LaravelJsonSeeder\JsonDatabaseSeeder::class);
    }
}

You can now call the JSON Seeder with the usual Artisan command ...

php artisan db:seed

Settings & Configurations

Directory

By default your seeds will be written into or read from the directory /database/json. If you want a different directory, you can add the environment variable JSON_SEEDS_DIRECTORY in your .env file ...

# .env

JSON_SEEDS_DIRECTORY=database/json

Ignoring tables

Some tables in your database might not require any seeds. If you want to ignore these tables, you can put them into the setting ignore-tables in the /config.jsonseeder.php

// config/jsonseeder.php

'ignore-tables' => [
    'migrations',
    'failed_jobs',
    'password_resets',
]

If a table in your database is empty, the LaravelJsonSeeder will create a JSON file with an empty array by default. This might be useful if you want your seeds to truncate this table. If you don't want this, you can change the setting ignore-empty-tables in config/jsonseeder.php, so no JSON seed will be created.

// config/jsonseeder.php

'ignore-empty-tables' => true

Important!!! Do not forget to clear the cache after editing the config file: php artisan cache:clear

Environments

The environment variable JSON_SEEDS_DIRECTORY might be useful if you are using seeds in Unit Tests and want to use different seeds for this.

- database
  - json
      - development
        - comapanies.json
        - users.json 
        - posts.json
      - testing
        - users.json
        - posts.json

Development

# .env

JSON_SEEDS_DIRECTORY=database/json/development

Testing

// phpunit.xml

<phpunit>
    <php>
        <env name="JSON_SEEDS_DIRECTORY" value="database/json/testing"/>
    </php>
</phpunit>

Errors & Warnings

Error	Type	Solution
Table does not exist!	Error	The name of the JSON file does not match any table. Check the filename or create the table.
JSON syntax is invalid!	Error	The JSON text inside the file seems to be invalid. Check if the JSON format is correct.
Exception occured! Check logfile!	Error	There seems to be a problem with the Database. Check your system and your default logfile.
JSON file is empty!	Error	The JSON file is completely empty, which makes it useless. If it should truncate the table, provide an empty array []. Otherwise delelte it.
JSON file has no rows!	Warning	The JSON file contains only an empty array []. This results in a truncated table and might not be intended.
Missing fields!	Warning	At least one row in the JSON file is missing a field, that is present in the database table. Check for typos or provide it in the JSON file.
Unknown fields!	Warning	At least one row in the JSON file has a field that does not exist in the database. Check for typos or make sure to add it to the database table.

License

Copyright © Timo Körber

Laravel JSON Seeder is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.