Laravel seeder vs factory

Seeders are used to populate your database tables with data, either fake or real. They are typically used to set up a consistent state for your application during development and testing. Seeders are good for inserting standard data that will likely be the same across local and production environments, such as a list of countries, post statuses, or account types[1][3].

Factories, on the other hand, are used to generate fake data for testing purposes. They are defined as classes that extend the base `Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\Factory` class. Factories use the `Faker` library to generate random data for your models[2][4]. Factories are particularly useful for quickly setting up test data for unit tests, where you need to create related models without manually specifying all the attributes each time[1][4].

You can use factories within seeders to make the seeding process more dynamic and realistic. For example, you can use a factory to create a user with random attributes, and then use that user to create related posts[1][4].

In summary, seeders are used for setting up initial data, while factories are used for generating fake data for testing purposes. Combining seeders and factories allows you to set up realistic test environments with minimal effort[1][4].