How to seed a date field in Laravel 5.3?

Question

I've managed to set up a decent amount of seeding for data that needs to be in the database at launch. Everything was easy and working well until I needed to seed a DATE field with a default date.

I've tried the following...

DatabaseSeeder.php

class SettingsTableSeeder extends Seeder {
    public function run()
    {
        Setting::create([
            'name' => 'Start Date',
            'date' => '2000-01-01'
        ]);
    }
}

In my model I've been told adding this should fix it, but it didn't.

Setting.php

protected $dates = [
    'created_at',
    'updated_at',
    'date'
];

Everytime I go to run the seeder it throws the error:

[InvalidArgumentException]
The separation symbol could not be found
Unexpected data found.
Trailing data

If I remove the quotes around the date it changes to..

[InvalidArgumentException]
The separation symbol could not be found
Data missing

Any idea how one goes about seeding a default value for a DATE database field?

Answer 1

If date is in the $dates array, insert Carbon instance instead of a string:

Setting::create([
    'name' => 'Start Date',
    'date' => Carbon::parse('2000-01-01')
]);

You'll need to make sure that Carbon is available to use at the top of the file:

use Carbon\Carbon;

It is auto-loaded by Laravel/Composer.