| name | seeding-countries |
| description | Seed or re-seed country data from aaix/laravel-countries on demand. Covers the one-shot master seeder invocation, idempotent re-runs, native-name backfill, and the rule for keeping per-country seeder files merge-friendly with upstream. |
Seeding aaix/laravel-countries
When to use this skill
Use this skill when setting up the package in a fresh app, refreshing country data after a package update, troubleshooting why countries are missing, or working on the bundled per-country data.
Run the seeder on demand — not on every db:seed
Country data is reference data. It changes rarely (only when this package ships updated data). The full seed is also expensive — 245 countries × 9 locales + native names + extras takes noticeable time.
Run the master seeder directly, once, when you actually need it:
php artisan db:seed --class='Aaix\LaravelCountries\Database\Seeders\DatabaseSeeder'
Typical situations to run it:
- After
composer require aaix/laravel-countries + php artisan migrate on a fresh app.
- After pulling a package update that ships new or changed country data.
- When restoring a database that was created without the country tables seeded.
The seeder is idempotent — safe to re-run; it will not duplicate rows.
What gets seeded
- 245 countries with ISO codes, phone codes, currencies, flag colors, coordinates, and structured extras.
- Translations for 9 locales:
ar, de, en, es, fr, it, nl, pt, ru.
- A separate
NativeNamesSeeder populates native_name on each country (the country's own language: Deutschland, 日本, Россия). Runs as part of the master seeder.
DO NOT
- Do not edit per-country seeder files (e.g.
DE_Germany.php, JP_Japan.php) to set native_name or anything else. Those files must stay merge-friendly with upstream. native_name is populated by NativeNamesSeeder.
- Do not run
php artisan w-countries:install or w-countries:languages — these commands do not exist in this fork.
- Do not
vendor:publish the migrations — they auto-load from the service provider.
Adding or overriding country data in the consuming app
If you need to attach app-specific data to a country (vat rate, shipping zone, internal flag), do not modify the package seeder files. Either:
- Create your own model with a
country_id foreign key (country_settings, country_vat, etc.) and seed it from your app's seeders.
- Or extend the country model in your app (see the
using-countries skill) and add accessors / casts there.
- If the data belongs in the package itself (corrected ISO data, missing translation, updated flag colors), open a pull request at the package repository instead of patching locally.
