Lumen database seeding error

Question

I'm learning back-end development with Laravel's Lumen framework, and I am writing database seeding class following Laravel's documentation. Below are the codes:

Model app\Photo.php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Photo extends Model
{
    protected $fillable = [
        'link', 'category_id', 'date'
    ];
}

Model factory database\factories\ModelFactory.php

$factory->define(App\Photo::class, function (Faker\Generator $faker) {
    return [
        'link' => 'https://placehold.it/' . mt_rand(200, 400),
        'category_id' => rand(1, 6),
        'date' => date("Y-m-d", mt_rand(1263618000, 1481428800))
    ];
});

DatabaseSeeder and PhotoTableSeeder classes database\seeds\DatabaseSeeder.php

use Illuminate\Database\Seeder;

class DatabaseSeeder extends Seeder
{
    public function run()
    {
         $this->call('PhotoTableSeeder');
    }
}

class PhotoTableSeeder extends Seeder
{
    public function run()
    {
        factory(App\Photo::class, 10)->create();
    }
}

Previously the table name in MySQL database was photos and the seeding works perfectly using the command php artisan db:seed:

Seeded: PhotoTableSeeder

But when I changed the table name to photo and run the same command, these errors occured:

[Illuminate\Database\QueryException] SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table or view not found: 1146 Table 'homestead.photos' doesn't exist (SQL: insert into `photos` (`link`, `category_id`, `date`) values (https://placehold.it/259, 3, 2012-05-28))

[PDOException] SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table or view not found: 1146 Table 'homestead.photos' doesn't exist

I don't know why the old table name is still called. I guess it was saved somewhere or am I missing something, I can't figure out the cause of the error.

Answer 1

Eloquent looks for the Plural form of the Model Class Name as the table in the database. So in this case it was expecting to find a table called "Photos"

if for some reason you need to name the table Photo you can always override the default by adding

protected $table = 'photo';

to your photo model class. I tend to do this even when I am using the default conventions just as a note to myself exactly which table a model is referencing