About jlapp/smart-seeder

jlapp/smart-seeder is a Laravel package for smart seeder adds the same methology to seeding that is currently used with migrations in order to let you seed in batches, seed to production databases or other environments, and to rerun seeds without wiping out your data.. It currently has 190 GitHub stars and 3.075 downloads on Packagist. Install it with composer require jlapp/smart-seeder. Discover more Laravel packages by jlapp or browse all Laravel packages to compare alternatives.

Last updated August 22, 2026

SmartSeeder for Laravel

For Laravel 5, please use the 5.0 branch!

For Laravel 4, please use the 4.2 branch!

Seeding as it is currently done in Laravel is intended only for dev builds, but what if you're iteratively creating your database and want to constantly flush it and repopulate it during development? What if you want to seed a production database with different data from what you use in development? What if you want to seed a table you've added to a database that is currently in production with new data?

Features

Allows you to seed databases in different environments with different values.
Allows you to "version" seeds the same way that Laravel currently handles migrations. Running php artisan seed will only run seeds that haven't already been run.
Prompts you if your database is in production.
Allows you to run multiple seeds of the same model/table
Overrides Laravel's seeding commands. SmartSeeder will fire when you run
```
php artisan db:seed
```
or
```
php artisan migrate:refresh --seed
```
You can run a single seed file with the --file option. php artisan seed:run --file=seed_2015_05_27_030017_UserSeeder

Use

When you install SmartSeeder, various artisan commands are made available to you which use the same methodology you're used to using with Migrations.

seed:run	Runs all the seeds in the smartSeeds directory that haven't been run yet.
seed:make	Makes a new seed class in the environment you specify.
seed:rollback	Rollback doesn't undo seeding (which would be impossible with an auto-incrementing primary key). It just allows you to re-run the last batch of seeds.
seed:reset	Resets all the seeds.
seed:refresh	Resets and re-runs all seeds.
seed:install	You don't have to use this... it will be run automatically when you call "seed"

Installation

Add require: "jlapp/smart-seeder": "dev-master" to your composer.json and run an update to bring it in (or run composer require jlapp/smartseeder).
Add 'Jlapp\SmartSeeder\SmartSeederServiceProvider' to your providers array in app/config/app.php
Run php artisan vendor:publish to push config files to your config folder if you want to override the name of the seeds folder or the name of the table where seeds are stored

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