How to implement your own Faker provider in Laravel

Question

I want to create a custom provider for Faker in Laravel (e.g. one for a random building name).

Where do I store the custom provider in my application and how do I use it?

Answer 1

You should use php artisan to generate the custom provider...

On the command line, navigate to the root of your app and type...

php artisan make:provider FakerServiceProvider

That should generate a new provider in the app/Providers folder. Here is what my register function looks like going off the example in the faker docs.

/**
 * Register the application services.
 *
 * @return void
 */
public function register()
{
    $this->app->singleton('Faker', function($app) {
        $faker = \Faker\Factory::create();
        $newClass = new class($faker) extends \Faker\Provider\Base {
            public function title($nbWords = 5)
            {
                $sentence = $this->generator->sentence($nbWords);
                return substr($sentence, 0, strlen($sentence) - 1);
            }
        };

        $faker->addProvider($newClass);
        return $faker;
    });
}

I'm using an anonymous class here. If you have php < 7, you would likely need to create a new file with your new provider class and pass that in. Make sure you also add this new provider to your providers array in config/app.php.

Now that it's registered, you can grab your new faker class using the following...

$faker = app('Faker');
echo $faker->title;

Additionally, if you go through the docs at https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/facades you should also be able to make a Faker facade quite easily. All the heavy lifting is done, you'd just have to create the new facade class, have getFacadeAccessor return 'Faker', and add it to your facades array in app/config.php.

Then you can simply use it like so...

echo Faker::title;

Answer 2

Create your custom provider class and save it under app/Faker/CustomProvider.php. Code:

namespace App\Faker;

use Faker\Provider\Base;

class CustomProvider extends Base
{
    public function customName()
    {
        return $this->generator->sentence(rand(2, 6));
    }
}

Then you need just add your custom provider to faker by addProvider method. Example of laravel's factory with adding custom provider:

<?php
use Faker\Generator as Faker;

$factory->define(App\Models\Model::class, function(Faker $faker) {
    $faker->addProvider(new App\Faker\CustomProvider($faker));

    return [
         'name' => $faker->customName,
    ];
});