Add faker() helper

[ghost]

This pull request adds a faker() helper, primarily to use in blade views.

This makes it ease to get fake data in your Laravel blade view, without having to make a factory based on your eloquent model.

<div>{{ faker()->name() }}</div>

Get a collection of faker instances

<ul>
    @foreach(faker(10) as $person)
        <li>{{ $person->name() }}</li>
    @endforeach
</ul>

Get a random image

    <img src="{{ faker()->image() }}" alt="{{ faker()->alt() }}" />

[rodrigopedra]

Shouldn't here be $this->$name() instead?

Otherwise it is equal to the default arm

[ghost]

@rodrigopedra I think you are correcrt, code could be simplified to:

    public function __call(string $name, array $arguments)
    {
        return $this->faker->$name();
    }

Then it would still use the custom image and alt method, and pass the other calls to faker.

[rodrigopedra]

Oh sure… I missed that the magic method will only be called for missing methods… might be the late hours from yesterday :)

[ankurk91]

Faker is a dev dependency, and would fail to run in production.
I afraid that developer may start using this method beyond seeders

[ghost]

Faker is a dev dependency, and would fail to run in production.
I afraid that developer may start using this method beyond seeders

@ankurk91 That's a good point. Although this helper would only make sense for development, there isn't any way to stop a developer for mistakingly use it in production.

One solution might be to check the environment in the Faker magic __cal method and throw an exception when not in development mode. This might make it more clear for anyone using this helper. Although not ideal.

[dennisprudlo]

@JohannesCleve An exception will be thrown in production either way, because the classes for faker won't exist in production. I think @ankurk91 concerns are that people use the faker helper in a dev environment because it works and then deploy the code to production, where it will fail.

[taylorotwell]

Feel free to add this helper to your own application!