Laravel 5: Creating Eloquent Models for Testing With factory

The factory function is used to create Eloquent models, and is generally used when testing an application to generate sample data.

#Signature

The signature of the factory function is:

 1function factory(
 2    $class
 3);
 4 
 5function factory(
 6    $class,
 7    string $modelName
 8);
 9 
10function factory(
11    $class,
12    int $numberOfModels
13);
14 
15function factory(
16    $class,
17    string $modelName,
18    int $numberOfModels
19);

#Example Use

The factory method can generally take one of four forms:

 1// Return an instance of the 'User' model.
 2$user = factory('App\User')->make();
 3 
 4// Return two instances of the 'User' model.
 5$users = factory('App\User', 2)->make();
 6 
 7// Return one instance of the 'User' model, with some
 8// modifications that were defined earlier and
 9// bound to the 'admin' description.
10$adminUser = factory('App\User', 'admin')->make();
11 
12// Return two instances of the 'User' model, with some
13// modifications that were defined earlier and
14// bound to the 'admin' description.
15$adminUsers = factory('App\User', 'admin', 2)->make();

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