seeding-countries

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:

1. Create your own model with a country_id foreign key (country_settings, country_vat, etc.) and seed it from your app's seeders.
2. Or extend the country model in your app (see the using-countries skill) and add accessors / casts there.
3. 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.