Laravel DB Seeds - Test Data v Sample Data

Question

I'm probably misunderstanding exactly how this works, but what's the best way to accomplish this? I have something in mind but it seems quite hacky.

I have a set of sample data which I use to test my application. This is seeded via the built in seeder in Laravel. This contains things like example users, addresses, documents etc.

I also have a set of default data which should go in production. I currently add this directly in the migration. For example, if I was adding a table for account_roles, I might include the following at the bottom of the migration

$account_admin = array('role' => 'Account Administrator', 'flag' => 'ACCOUNT_ADMIN');
$account_owner = array('role' => 'Account Administrator', 'flag' => 'ACCOUNT_OWNER');
DB::table('account_roles')->insert($account_admin);
DB::table('account_roles')->insert($account_owner);

This way, on production, I just migrate the database to insert any production ready database values, and on staging/development, I can refresh the migrations and then seed the database with sample data.

Is there any other (better) way to do this?

Answer 1

You could run a check on the current environment in your seeder file, and seed as needed

<?php

class DatabaseSeeder extends Seeder {

    public function run()
    {
            Eloquent::unguard();

            if (App::environment() === 'production')
            {
                $this->call('ProductionSeeder');
            }
            else
            {
                $this->call('StagingSeeder');
            }
    }

}