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Inside this article we will see the concept of database seeding in laravel 8 using json file. Laravel 8 database seeding from json file is technique to dump test data into tables in bulk.

This tutorial will be super easy to understand and it’s steps are easier to implement in your code as well. Database seeding is the process in which we feed test data to tables. We can insert data either using Faker library, manual data or means of some more data sources like CSV, JSON.

Laravel 8 Database Seeding from CSV File Tutorial, Click here.

In this tutorial we will use JSON file to seed data into database table in Laravel 8.

Learn More –

Let’s get started.

Laravel Installation

We will create laravel project using composer. So, please make sure your system should have composer installed. If not, may be this article will help you to Install composer in system.

Here is the command to create a laravel project-

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel blog

To start the development server of Laravel –

php artisan serve

URL: http://127.0.0.1:8000

Assuming laravel already installed inside your system.

Create Database & Connect

To create a database, either we can create via Manual tool of PhpMyadmin or by means of a mysql command.

CREATE DATABASE laravel_app;

To connect database with application, Open .env file from application root. Search for DB_ and update your details.

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=laravel_app
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=root

Create Model & Migration

Open project into terminal and run this command to create model & migration file.

$ php artisan make:model Country -m

It will create two files –

Model – Country.php at /app/Models folder
Migration file – 2021_07_25_123805_create_countries_table at /database/migrations folder.

Open Migration file and write this complete code into it.

<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class CreateCountriesTable extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('countries', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->increments('id');
            $table->string('sortname');
            $table->string('name');
            $table->string('phonecode');
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::dropIfExists('countries');
    }
}

Open model file Country.php and write this complete code into it.

<?php

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Country extends Model
{
    use HasFactory;

    public $timestamps = false;
}

Run Migration

Next, we need to create table inside database.

$ php artisan migrate

Prepare JSON Data File

As we have table countries in which columns as id, name, sortname, phonecode.

We will take a JSON file in which properties of each object will be ID, Sortname, Name & Phonecode. Rest we need data into it.

Download JSON File – countries Table

When you will download the given file it will be in .txt format. Rename file into .json and place this countries-data.json file inside /public/data folder.

Open countries-data.json file, you should see –

Create Seeder

Next, we need to create a seeder file.

$ php artisan make:seeder CountrySeeder

It will create a file CountrySeeder.php at /database/seeders folder.

Open CountrySeeder.php and write this complete code into it.

<?php

namespace Database\Seeders;

use Illuminate\Database\Seeder;
use App\Models\Country;
use File;

class CountrySeeder extends Seeder
{
    /**
     * Run the database seeds.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function run()
    {
        $json = File::get(public_path("data/countries-data.json"));
        $countries = json_decode($json);
        
        foreach ($countries->countries as $key => $value) {
            Country::create([
                "sortname" => $value->sortname,
                "name" => $value->name,
                "phonecode" => $value->phoneCode
            ]);
        }

    }
}

Data Seeding

Open project into terminal and run this artisan command

$ php artisan db:seed --class=CountrySeeder

It will seed countries data into table.

We hope this article helped you to learn Laravel 8 Database Seeding from JSON File Tutorial in a very detailed way.

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