Database Seeding

##Flush cache before/after seeding

You may discover that it is best to flush this package's cache BEFORE seeding, to avoid cache conflict errors.

And if you use the WithoutModelEvents trait in your seeders, flush it AFTER seeding as well.

// reset cached roles and permissions
app()[\Spatie\Permission\PermissionRegistrar::class]->forgetCachedPermissions();

You can optionally flush the cache before seeding by using the SetUp() method of your test suite (see the Testing page in the docs).

Or it can be done directly in a seeder class, as shown below.

Here is a sample seeder, which first clears the cache, creates permissions and then assigns permissions to roles (the order of these steps is intentional):

use Illuminate\Database\Seeder;
use Spatie\Permission\Models\Role;
use Spatie\Permission\Models\Permission;

class RolesAndPermissionsSeeder extends Seeder
{
    public function run()
    {
        // Reset cached roles and permissions
        app()[\Spatie\Permission\PermissionRegistrar::class]->forgetCachedPermissions();

        // create permissions
        Permission::create(['name' => 'edit articles']);
        Permission::create(['name' => 'delete articles']);
        Permission::create(['name' => 'publish articles']);
        Permission::create(['name' => 'unpublish articles']);

        // create roles and assign created permissions

        // this can be done as separate statements
        $role = Role::create(['name' => 'writer']);
        $role->givePermissionTo('edit articles');

        // or may be done by chaining
        $role = Role::create(['name' => 'moderator'])
            ->givePermissionTo(['publish articles', 'unpublish articles']);

        $role = Role::create(['name' => 'super-admin']);
        $role->givePermissionTo(Permission::all());
    }
}

##Speeding up seeding for large data sets

When seeding large quantities of roles or permissions you may consider using Eloquent's insert command instead of create, as this bypasses all the internal checks that this package does when calling create (including extra queries to verify existence, test guards, etc).

    $arrayOfPermissionNames = ['writer', 'editor'];
    $permissions = collect($arrayOfPermissionNames)->map(function ($permission) {
        return ['name' => $permission, 'guard_name' => 'web'];
    });

    Permission::insert($permissions->toArray());

Alternatively you could use DB::insert, as long as you also provide all the required data fields. One example of this is shown below ... but note that this example hard-codes the table names and field names, thus does not respect any customizations you may have in your permissions config file.

$permissionsByRole = [
    'admin' => ['restore posts', 'force delete posts'],
    'editor' => ['create a post', 'update a post', 'delete a post'],
    'viewer' => ['view all posts', 'view a post']
];

$insertPermissions = fn ($role) => collect($permissionsByRole[$role])
    ->map(fn ($name) => DB::table('permissions')->insertGetId(['name' => $name, 'guard_name' => 'web']))
    ->toArray();

$permissionIdsByRole = [
    'admin' => $insertPermissions('admin'),
    'editor' => $insertPermissions('editor'),
    'viewer' => $insertPermissions('viewer')
];

foreach ($permissionIdsByRole as $role => $permissionIds) {
    $role = Role::whereName($role)->first();

    DB::table('role_has_permissions')
        ->insert(
            collect($permissionIds)->map(fn ($id) => [
                'role_id' => $role->id,
                'permission_id' => $id
            ])->toArray()
        );
}

// and also add the command to flush the cache again now after doing all these inserts

CAUTION: ANY TIME YOU DIRECTLY RUN DB QUERIES you are bypassing cache-control features. So you will need to manually flush the package cache AFTER running direct DB queries, even in a seeder.