Extend Faker in Laravel 11

Sometimes it’s necessary to make your testing data appear as close to the production data as possible. In my case, I wanted more predictable and realistic looking email addresses for system users (they include the company domain and a specific pattern) and other commonly repeated generators.

To extend Faker, first create a provider class to implement your extension code, and a provider to register with the application.

php artisan make:class Faker/CompanyFakesProvider
php artisan make:provider CompanyFakesServiceProvider

In Laravel 11 service providers created through artisan are already registered. Take a look at your bootstrap/providers.php file to see what I mean.

return [
    App\Providers\AppServiceProvider::class,
    App\Providers\CompanyFakesServiceProvider::class,
    Spatie\Permission\PermissionServiceProvider::class,
];

In your App/Providers/CompanyFakesServiceProvider.php you’ll want to register a singleton and add the provider to faker.

<?php

namespace App\Providers;

use App\Faker\CompanyFakesProvider;
use Faker\Factory;
use Faker\Generator;
use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;

class FakerServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    /**
     * Register services.
     */
    public function register(): void
    {
        $this->app->singleton(Generator::class, function () {
            $faker = Factory::create();
            $faker->addProvider(new CompanyFakesProvider($faker));
            return $faker;
        });
    }
}

With the class registered and added to faker as a provider, you can now implement your custom methods. In your CompanyFakesProvider.phpfile you’ll extend the faker base, then add your methods.

<?php

namespace App\Faker;

use Faker\Provider\Base;

class CompanyFakesProvider extends Base
{
    public function companyEmail()
    {
        return $this->generator->randomLetter() . strtolower($this->generator->lastName()) . '@mycompany.com';
    }

    public function salesforceId()
    {
        return $this->generator->regexify('[a-zA-Z0-9]{18}');
    }
}

Now I can invoke these methods in my factories like this. database/factories/AccountFactory.php

<?php

namespace Database\Factories;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\Factory;

/**
 * @extends \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\Factory<\App\Models\Account>
 */
class AccountFactory extends Factory
{
     */
    /**
     * Define the model's default state.
     *
     * @return array<string, mixed>
     */
    public function definition(): array
    {
        return [
            'id' => $this->faker->salesforceId,
            'name' => $this->faker->company,
            'owner_id' => $this->faker->salesforceId,
            'owner_name' => $this->faker->name,
            'owner_email' => $this->faker->companyEmail,
        ];
    }
}

That’s all there is to it! Stay DRY out there folks.