How to seed timestamps on laravel 4.1?

Question

Good day,

I was having an error "Object of class DateTime could not be converted to string" when Im trying to seed my database.

here is my migration code:

    public function up()
{
    Schema::create('tblinventory', function(Blueprint $table) {
        $table->increments('id');
        $table->integer('itemId');
        $table->enum('status', array('active','inactive'))->default(null)->nullable();
        $table->float('purchasePrice');
        $table->float('sellingPrice');
        $table->date('expirationDate');
        $table->float('ReceivedQuantity');
        $table->float('soldQuantity');
        $table->timestamps();
    });
}

and my seeder:

<?php

class InventoryTableSeeder extends Seeder {

public function run()
{
    // Uncomment the below to wipe the table clean before populating
    DB::table('tblinventory')->truncate();

    $insert = [
        [
        'itemId' => '1', 
        'status' => 'inactive',
        'ReceivedQuantity'=>'100',
        'SoldQuantity'=>'93',
        'sellingPrice'=>'4.5',
        'purchasePrice'=>'3.5',
        'created_at' => new DateTime,
        'expirationDate'=>date('2015-02-22')
        ],
        [
        'itemId' => '1', 
        'status' => 'inactive',
        'ReceivedQuantity'=>'300',
        'SoldQuantity'=>'300',
        'sellingPrice'=>'4.75',
        'purchasePrice'=>'3.65',
        'expirationDate'=>date('2015-02-22')
        ],
        [
        'itemId' => '2', 
        'status' => 'inactive',
        'ReceivedQuantity'=>'100',
        'SoldQuantity'=>'93',
        'sellingPrice'=>'3.5',
        'purchasePrice'=>'2.5',
        'expirationDate'=>date('2014-07-22')
        ],
        [
        'itemId' => '3', 
        'status' => 'inactive',
        'ReceivedQuantity'=>'100',
        'SoldQuantity'=>'93',
        'sellingPrice'=>'12.5',
        'purchasePrice'=>'10.5',
        'expirationDate'=>date('2017-01-02')
        ],
        [
        'itemId' => '3', 
        'status' => 'inactive',
        'ReceivedQuantity'=>'100',
        'SoldQuantity'=>'100',
        'sellingPrice'=>'14.5',
        'purchasePrice'=>'13.5',
        'expirationDate'=>date('2017-07-22')
        ],
        [
        'itemId' => '4', 
        'status' => 'inactive',
        'ReceivedQuantity'=>'100',
        'SoldQuantity'=>'93',
        'sellingPrice'=>'24.5',
        'purchasePrice'=>'23.5',
        'expirationDate'=>date('2015-07-22')
        ]

    ];

    DB::table('tblinventory')->insert($insert);
    // Uncomment the below to run the seeder
    // DB::table('inventories')->insert($inventories);
}

}

I get the error when I put 'created_at'=> new DateTime. How can I fix this? thank you!

Answer 1

Try to create your dates using Carbon (Laravel uses it internally):

'expirationDate' => \Carbon\Carbon::createFromDate(2014,07,22)->toDateTimeString()

or

'created_at' => \Carbon\Carbon::now()->toDateTimeString()

Answer 2

I would recommend using PHP Faker if you want to randomize your seeds for mock data. Otherwise you can just use

date('Y-m-d H:i:s');

Using Faker

https://github.com/fzaninotto/Faker

Add to composer.json

"fzaninotto/faker" : "dev-master",

Include the Namespace

use Faker\Factory as Faker;

Initialize Faker

$faker = Faker::create();

Start Faking Stuff

$faker->dateTime();