Using Namespaces in Laravel Tinker

May 4, 2017 laravel php

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I hate to admit it, but I do like Laravel’s Tinker package. Sometimes, just testing out your relationships on the command line before you go further is super helpful.

One thing I don’t like, though, is the amount of typing it takes when I’m trying to test out my various models. My structure is something like App\Models\Group\Model - which can get quite annoying to type.

Check out this Laravel Tinker output:

>>> $account = new App\Models\Facebook\Account();
=> App\Models\Facebook\Account {#1155}
>>> $account->pages()->save(new App\Models\Facebook\Page());

Ugh - so many keystrokes right? :-)

But, you can actually set your working namespace inside of Tinker. Check out this example:

>>> use App\Models;
=> null
>>> $account = new Models\Facebook\Account();
=> App\Models\Facebook\Account {#1162}

That’s cool - but let’s say you knew you were even going to be working just with Facebook models, in that context - go one level deeper with your namespace usage.

>>> use App\Models\Facebook;
=> null
>>> $account = new Facebook\Account();
=> App\Models\Facebook\Account {#1142}