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Seeding Grid Data

Introduction

Seeding a Grid field is in many ways the same as seeding any other relationship. This tutorial will cover the slightly more complicated relationship structure of the Grid field type and how to seed data into it.

Relationship Structure

First let's take a look at the structure of the relationships that the Grid field type uses.

The relationship from the Entry to the Grid Entry looks like this:

Entry -> Grid Objects -> Grid Entry

In the above example the Entry -> Grid Objects is a multiple relationship where every Grid Object is a GridModel instance with a polymorphic relationship to the Grid Entry which holds the actual field data for the grid row.

Prerequisites

This tutorial will assume you have already seeded, migrated, or otherwise created the Grid structures required to seed.

Let's assume:

  • The users stream has a grid field type favorites assigned to it.
  • We have a books grid with title and author fields assigned.
  • We also have a movies with the title field assigned.
  • Both books and movies grids are translatable.
  • In both grids the title field assignment is translatable.

Creating a Seeder

Let's create a seeder in the base application's /database/seeds directory using Laravel's make:seeder command:

php artisan make:seeder GridSeeder

The rest of the code provided in this article should be placed within the seeder's run method.

Seeding Grid Data

The first thing we will need to do is grab a user to seed data for. Let's just grab the first user:

$user = UserModel::first();

Next let's create the Grid Entry portion of the relationship. The name of the generated model to use here will depend on the name of the stream you are seeding:

$book = GridBooksEntryModel::create(
    [
        'en'     => [
            'title' => '7 Habits of Highly Effective People',
        ],
        'author' => 'Stephen Covey',
    ]
);

$movie = GridMoviesEntryModel::create(
    [
        'en' => [
            'title' => 'John Wick',
        ],
    ]
);

Next we will use the grid relation's create method to create grid rows. This will create the Grid Object portion of the relationship and also attach it to the Entry:

$user->favorites()->create(
    [
        'entry' => $book,
    ]
);

$user->favorites()->create(
    [
        'entry' => $movie,
    ]
);

Running the Seeder

To run our seeder use Laravel's db:seed command:

php artisan db:seed --class=GridSeeder

Example

Below is an example of what this seeder might look like all cleaned up and with steps combined:

<?php

use Anomaly\Streams\Platform\Model\Grid\GridBooksEntryModel;
use Anomaly\Streams\Platform\Model\Grid\GridMoviesEntryModel;
use Anomaly\UsersModule\User\UserModel;
use Illuminate\Database\Seeder;

class GridSeeder extends Seeder
{

    public function run()
    {
        /* @var UserModel $user */
        $user = UserModel::first();

        $user->favorites()->create(
            [
                'entry' => GridBooksEntryModel::create(
                    [
                        'en'     => [
                            'title' => '7 Habits of Highly Effective People',
                        ],
                        'author' => 'Stephen Covey',
                    ]
                ),
            ]
        );

        $user->favorites()->create(
            [
                'entry' => GridMoviesEntryModel::create(
                    [
                        'en' => [
                            'title' => 'John Wick',
                        ],
                    ]
                ),
            ]
        );
    }
}