How to Seed More Data When Laravel Project is Live

If you have 10 rows of data in the initial Seeder file, but then you need to import 10 more rows when the project is already launched, what should you do? There are a few options.

Imagine the scenario that you have 3 Roles, but then at some point, you decide to add 3 more.

database/seeders/RoleSeeder.php:

use App\Models\Role;
 
class RoleSeeder extends Seeder
{
    public function run()
    {
        Role::create(['name' => 'Administrator']);
        Role::create(['name' => 'Editor']);
        Role::create(['name' => 'User']);
    }
}

So, in this case, you have an Administrator, Editor, and User.

But, a month after the project is launched, the client wants to have more roles: Publisher, Viewer, and Commenter. Where do you put them?

And, an even more important question: how do you automatically launch that seed/command on all possible server environments (live/staging/etc), including the local ones for your teammates?

Option 1. Create a new Migration

Yes, you've read it correctly: migration for the data, not for the schema structure.

The migration file has an up() method where you can do whatever you want, not just Schema::create().

And the migration php artisan migrate is a typical command to run for everyone when pulling the new changes, including deployment to live server and automatic CI/CD and testing process with tools like GitHub Actions.

So, it's the most convenient and logical place to ensure that all server environments would have that data.

php artisan make:migration seed_roles

database/migrations/xxxxxxx_seed_roles.php:

use App\Models\Role;
 
return new class extends Migration
{
    public function up()
    {
        Role::create(['name' => 'Publisher']);
        Role::create(['name' => 'Viewer']);
        Role::create(['name' => 'Commenter']);
    }
};

Notice: if you want to make sure that this Role record doesn't already exist in the database, you may run this with firstOrCreate():

Role::create(['name' => 'Publisher']); 
Role::firstOrCreate(['name' => 'Publisher']); 

Option 2. Create a New Seeder

If you want more control over who/when launches the new seeds you may create them as a separate Seeder file.

php artisan make:seeder ExtraRoleSeeder

database/seeders/ExtraRoleSeeder.php:

use App\Models\User;
 
class ExtraRoleSeeder extends Seeder
{
    public function run()
    {
        Role::firstOrCreate(['name' => 'Publisher']);
        Role::firstOrCreate(['name' => 'Viewer']);
        Role::firstOrCreate(['name' => 'Commenter']);
    }
}

Then, you add that Seeder to the main DatabaseSeeder.php file, so the next time someone installs the project for the first time, they would have those new roles, too:

database/seeders/DatabaseSeeder.php:

class DatabaseSeeder extends Seeder
{
    public function run()
    {
        $this->call(ExtraRoleSeeder::class);
    }
}

But when someone wants to launch that seeder manually, they do this:

php artisan db:seed --class=ExtraRoleSeeder

Option 3. Add Data Manually

Maybe you want to add the data but not necessarily on all the server environments, only on the live server? Then don't even bother creating more seeders or migration files, like above.

Just go directly to the DB client or your admin panel and add new roles there.

After all, it's a live project at the moment, with data changing in live mode, too. Not everything should be automated for the future.