[5.3] Create factory modifiers

[browner12]

i've come to find that I would would like to use factories a little different than is currently available. Currently you can define and defineAs factories. This works okay, but where I run into issues is where I have a lot of variable types. For example, I may have a Blog that has a published_at field and an user_id field. The Blog can be published or unpublished, and it can have an author or be written by anonymous. I could have a published authored Blog, an unpublished authored Blog, a published anonymous Blog, and an unpublished anonymous Blog. Currently, I would have to write 5 different factory types for this.

Ideally what I would like is 'modifiers' for each factory. To define them I would:

$factory->define(App\Blog::class, function (Faker\Generator $faker) {
    return [
        'title'        => $faker->word,
        'body'         => $faker->paragraph(2),
        'published_at' => null,
        'user_id'      => null,
    ];
});

$factory->defineModifier(\App\Blog::class, 'published', function (\Faker\Generator $faker) {

    return [
        'published_at' => $faker->dateTime,
    ];
});

$factory->defineModifier(\App\Blog::class, 'authored', function (\Faker\Generator $faker) {

    return [
        'user_id' => $faker->numberBetween(1, 10),
    ];
});

This would allow me to mix and match modifiers as needed. Then to use the factories I would

factory(\App\Blog::class, 5)->create();
factory(\App\Blog::class, 5)->modifiers('published')->create();
factory(\App\Blog::class, 5)->modifiers('authored')->create();
factory(\App\Blog::class, 5)->modifiers(['authored', 'published'])->create();

I believe this offers a lot more flexibility, and still allows people to do it the current way if they prefer.

[arthurkirkosa]

See Multiple Factory Types in Model Factories

[browner12]

thanks, I am aware of the multiple factories types. unfortunately, unless I'm mistaken, they don't allow you to apply multiple 'modifications' to the factory.

[browner12]

wondering if there are any thoughts on this?

[browner12]

am i supposed to fix this @GrahamCampbell or do we let StyleCI handle it afterwards?

[GrahamCampbell]

Yeh, don't worry about StyleCI. :)

[kamui545]

Looking forward to this, pretty neat!

[taylorotwell]

Sorry this took so long. I renamed "modifiers" to "states"... pretty much works the same though 👍

[tillkruss]

@browner12: Nice! Could you update the docs as well?

[browner12]

no problem. glad it worked out.

was just going to ask, @taylorotwell would you like me to PR a docs update?