Seeding data in Laravel - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Seeding Data in Laravel

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple blog application. You want to add some initial posts to your database so you can see content when you open the app.

🎯 Goal: Create a Laravel seeder to add three specific blog posts to the posts table.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a seeder class named PostSeeder

Define an array of posts with exact titles and content

Use the DB facade to insert posts into the posts table

Call the seeder from the DatabaseSeeder class

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Seeding data helps developers quickly fill a database with sample or initial data for testing and development.

💼 Career

Knowing how to seed data is essential for backend developers working with Laravel to prepare databases for applications.

1

Create the posts array

Create a variable called posts that holds an array with three associative arrays. Each associative array must have keys 'title' and 'content' with these exact values:

1. Title: 'Welcome to Laravel', Content: 'This is the first post.'
2. Title: 'Seeding Data', Content: 'Learn how to seed data in Laravel.'
3. Title: 'Database Basics', Content: 'Understanding migrations and seeders.'

Laravel

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a PHP array with three elements. Each element is an associative array with keys 'title' and 'content'.

2

Create the PostSeeder class

Create a class named PostSeeder that extends Seeder. Inside it, define a run method. Inside run, add the posts array you created in Step 1.

Laravel

$posts = [
    ['title' => 'Welcome to Laravel', 'content' => 'This is the first post.'],
    ['title' => 'Seeding Data', 'content' => 'Learn how to seed data in Laravel.'],
    ['title' => 'Database Basics', 'content' => 'Understanding migrations and seeders.'],
];

// Create PostSeeder class with run method
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember to import Seeder and define the run method inside your class.

3

Insert posts into the database

Inside the run method of PostSeeder, use DB::table('posts')->insert($posts); to insert the posts array into the posts table.

Laravel

 'Welcome to Laravel', 'content' => 'This is the first post.'],
            ['title' => 'Seeding Data', 'content' => 'Learn how to seed data in Laravel.'],
            ['title' => 'Database Basics', 'content' => 'Understanding migrations and seeders.'],
        ];
        // Insert posts into the posts table
        # Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use the DB facade to insert the array into the posts table.

4

Call PostSeeder from DatabaseSeeder

Open the DatabaseSeeder class and inside its run method, add the line $this->call(PostSeeder::class); to run your PostSeeder.

Laravel

 'Welcome to Laravel', 'content' => 'This is the first post.'],
            ['title' => 'Seeding Data', 'content' => 'Learn how to seed data in Laravel.'],
            ['title' => 'Database Basics', 'content' => 'Understanding migrations and seeders.'],
        ];
        DB::table('posts')->insert($posts);
    }
}

class DatabaseSeeder extends Seeder
{
    public function run()
    {
        // Call PostSeeder here
        # Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use $this->call() inside DatabaseSeeder::run() to run your PostSeeder.